A SYNTHESIS OF
PARTICIPATORYPOVERTY
ASSESSMENTS
FROM
FOUR SITESIN VIET NAM:
Lao Cai, Ha Tinh, Tra Vinh& Ho Chi Minh City
Submission to the WDR 2000 by Vietnam-Sweden MountainRural Development Programme, ActionAid, Save the Children
Fund (UK) and Oxfam (GB).
Ha Noi,Viet Nam,July 1999
This report is compiled by the World Bank Resident Mission in Viet Nam asa submission to the Consultations With The Poor study, based on
information presented by:
The Viet Nam Sweden MountainRural Development Programme and
the Viet Nam Sweden HealthCooperation Programme
in collaboration withthe People’s Committees of Muong
Khuong District and Bao Thang District,Lao Cai Province:
Lao Cai Province Participatory PovertyAssessment, 1999
Actionaid Vietnamin collaboration with
Ha Tinh Province Committee for NGOAffairs
and Hanoi Research and Training Centrefor Community Development:
Ha Tinh Participatory PovertyAssessment Report
Oxfam (Great Britain):In collaboration with
The Long An Community Health Centreand District and Commune officials
Participatory Poverty Assessment inDuyen Hai and Chau Thanh Districts,
Tra Vinh Province
Save The Children Fund (UK):With research input from
Social Science Institute, the SocialDevelopment Research Centre, the YouthResearch Institute, the Open Universityand representatives from Ward People’s
Committees
A Participatory Poverty Assessment in HoChi Minh City
The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed here are those of the authors anddo not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Board of ExecutiveDirectors, or the governments they represent.
Preface
This study is part of a global research effort entitled Consultations with the Poor,designed to inform the World Development Report 2000/1 on Poverty and Development.The research involved poor people in twenty-three countries around the world. The effortalso included two comprehensive reviews of Participatory Poverty Assessmentscompleted in recent years by the World Bank and other agencies. Deepa Narayan,Principal Social Development Specialist in the World Bank's Poverty Group, initiatedand led the research effort.
The global Consultations with the Poor is unique in two respects. It is the first large scalecomparative research effort using participatory methods to focus on the voices of thepoor. It is also the first time that the World Development Report is drawing onparticipatory research in a systematic fashion. Much has been learned in this processabout how to conduct Participatory Poverty Assessments on a major scale acrosscountries so that they have policy relevance. Findings from the country studies arealready being used at the national level, and the methodology developed by the studyteam is already being adopted by many others.
We want to congratulate the network of 23 country research teams who mobilized at suchshort notice and completed the studies within six months. We also want to thank DeepaNarayan and her team: Patti Petesch, Consultant, provided overall coordination; MeeraKaul Shah, Consultant, provided methodological guidance; Ulrike Erhardt, providedadministrative assistance; and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussexprovided advisory support. More than a hundred colleagues within the World Bank alsocontributed greatly by identifying and supporting the local research teams.
The study would not have been possible without the generous financial support of theU.K. Department for International Development (DFID), numerous departments withinthe World Bank, the Swedish International Development Agency, John D. & Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation and several NGOs.
The completion of these studies in a way is just the beginning. We must now ensure thatthe findings lead to follow-up action to make a difference in the lives of the poor.
Michael Walton Ravi KanburDirector, Poverty Group & Director,Chief Economist, Human Development World Development Report
Contents
CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND1.1 OBJECTIVES, PROCESS AND METHODOLOGY ................................................................. 1
Objectives .................................................................................................................... 1Methodology and Process............................................................................................ 2
1.2 RESEARCH SITES ............................................................................................................ 2The Country Setting ..................................................................................................... 2The Study Provinces .................................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER 2: EXPLORING WELL-BEING AND ILL-BEING2.1 WELL-BEING AND ASSET ENDOWMENTS....................................................................... 11
Natural capital ........................................................................................................... 12Human capital............................................................................................................ 13Social capital ............................................................................................................. 14Financial capital........................................................................................................ 14Material assets........................................................................................................... 16
2.2 ILL-BEING: POOR OR VULNERABLE HOUSEHOLDS AND THEIR ASSET BASES .................. 16Households with constraints in natural, financial and material capital ................... 19Households facing crises ........................................................................................... 21Human capital............................................................................................................ 21Cultural and physical marginalization ...................................................................... 24
2.3 TRENDS IN WELL-BEING AND ILL-BEING...................................................................... 25Overall trends in well-being and ill-being................................................................. 25Individual household changes in well-being and ill-being: upward anddownward mobility .................................................................................................... 27Asset endowment, trends in livelihood systems and inequality.................................. 29Factors which might increase differentiation between households........................... 31Factors which might mitigate against growing differentiation ................................. 32
CHAPTER 3: VULNERABILITY, SECURITY AND COPING WITH HARDSHIP3.1 PERCEPTIONS OF RISK AND VULNERABILITY................................................................ 33
Human shocks and crises........................................................................................... 34Agricultural and economic losses.............................................................................. 37Material losses ........................................................................................................... 39
3.2 LIVELIHOOD SECURITY ................................................................................................ 39Stability of employment and income .......................................................................... 40Inherited wealth ......................................................................................................... 40Security of shelter ...................................................................................................... 41
3.3 COPING WITH DECLINES IN WELL-BEING....................................................................... 41Mechanisms in the community ................................................................................... 44Formal safety nets...................................................................................................... 44Borrowing money and food........................................................................................ 45Selling assets.............................................................................................................. 46Laboring..................................................................................................................... 47
Child labor................................................................................................................. 48Withdrawing children from school ............................................................................ 48Selling blood .............................................................................................................. 49Selling women and babies.......................................................................................... 49Expenditure reducing strategies: living with ill-health and reducing consumption.. 50Gathering food or products from the forests ............................................................. 50Other, less frequently-mentioned coping strategies................................................... 50
3.4 THE ROLE OF THE COMMUNITY: SOCIAL CAPITAL, SOCIAL COHESIONAND SOCIAL EXCLUSION............................................................................................. 50Social capital and cohesion ....................................................................................... 51Social exclusion and problems with community cohesion......................................... 53
CHAPTER 4: INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS4.1 INFORMAL AND FORMAL INSTITUTIONS ....................................................................... 584.2 POOR HOUSEHOLDS AND THE ADMINISTRATION........................................................... 59
Information flows, representation and voice ............................................................. 60Transparency and financing of local government ..................................................... 61Poor households, local government and service delivery ......................................... 63Targeting.................................................................................................................... 67
CHAPTER 5: GENDER RELATIONSWomen and decisions in the Household .................................................................... 70Women and workloads............................................................................................... 71Women and domestic violence ................................................................................... 73Women and health...................................................................................................... 73Women and institutions.............................................................................................. 74Education and ethnic minority women ...................................................................... 74Women and coping strategies .................................................................................... 75
CHAPTER 6: PRIORITIES AND PROBLEMS OF POOR HOUSEHOLDSThe poor prioritize interventions which will increase and ....................................... 79An improvement in off-farm employment opportunities ........................................... 79With few exceptions, the poor prioritize interventions ............................................. 79Improvements in infrastructure ................................................................................. 80Households prioritized access to formal sector ........................................................ 80In all sites, poor households felt that access to information was a high priority ...... 81For poor migrants, equal access to government services is a priority...................... 82Poor households feel that interventions should be better-targeted ........................... 82Poor households feel they should be involved in the decisions which affect them.... 83For the elderly, access to affordable health care was a priority............................... 83For children, a secure and harmonious family and community ............................... 83
Tables
Table 1: PPA research sites .............................................................................................................. iTable 2: Summary of PPA Research Sites....................................................................................... 8Table 3: Categories of households in high well-being................................................................... 11Table 4: Patterns of Household Livestock Ownership in Lao Cai................................................. 15Table 5: Typology of poor and vulnerable households ................................................................. 18Table 6: The Household Lifecycle and Poverty: the newly-separated households and small,
elderly households........................................................................................................... 22Table 7: Households that have separated....................................................................................... 23Table 8: Trends in well-being in Ho Chi Minh City...................................................................... 27Table 9: Most frequently Cited Crises in the PPA research areas ................................................. 34Table 10: Constraints and difficulties in managing capital ........................................................... 36Table 11: Mechanisms for coping with declines in well-being ..................................................... 43Table 12: Different forms of borrowing in Tra Vinh and Lao Cai ................................................ 45Table 13: Community Support Mechanisms by site...................................................................... 51Table 14: Costs of ceremonies and social events in Tra Vinh....................................................... 52Table 15: Summary of types of social exclusion experienced, in order of priority ....................... 54Table 16: Commonly mentioned formal institutions ..................................................................... 58Table 17: Commonly mentioned informal institutions.................................................................. 59Table 18: The Calculation of Taxes for Three Hypothetical Households ..................................... 62Table 19: Levels of institutional borrowing in one midland commune, Lao Cai .......................... 67Table 20: Percentage of poor and hungry households in two communes...................................... 67Table 21: Changes in women's responsibility and authority in Ha Tinh ....................................... 71Table 22: Daily timetable for a woman in Lao Cai ....................................................................... 72Table 23: Proportion of males and females literate in Vietnamese Language............................... 75Table 24: Prioritized needs of Different Groups of Poor People................................................... 76Table 25: Problems and causes of problems raised by poor households ....................................... 77Table 26: Financial needs of the poor - current and required financial services ........................... 81
BOXESBox 1: Issues in landholdings...........................................................................................12Box 2: Households with constraints in natural, financial and material capital ................20Box 3: The dilemma of poor farmers in Tra Vinh - The debt spiral ................................21Box 4: Trends in well-being and ill being in Tra Vinh & Ha Tinh..................................26Box 5: The Importance of Information in moving out of Poverty...................................29Box 6: Human Shocks death of a main labourer..............................................................35Box 7 : Human Shocks: the costs of ill health .................................................................35Box 8: Agricultural and economic losses.........................................................................37Box 9 : Failure of an investment in watermelon production in Tra Vinh ........................38Box 10: Material Losses in Lao Cai and Ha Tinh............................................................39Box 11: Children’s perceptions of threats to security (Ho Chi Minh City) .....................41Box 12: Food Support in one District of Lao Cai Province .............................................44Box 13: Food Support in Ta Gia Khau Commune in Lao Cai Province..........................44Box 14: Landlessness in Tra Vinh ...................................................................................47Box 15: Selling blood in Ho Chi Minh City ....................................................................49
Box 16: Selling women in Ho Chi Minh .........................................................................50Box 17: Community disapproval: a single mother...........................................................56Box 18: Lack of information, consultation and compensation: Tra Vinh........................61Box 19: Costs of primary education in Ho Chi Minh City ..............................................64Box 20: Connections and Access to Credit in Tra Vinh ..................................................66Box 21: Gender based problems in PPA Study Sites.......................................................70Box 22: Women and Health .............................................................................................74Box 23: Migrant family in Ho Chi Minh City .................................................................82
FiguresFigure 1: Trends in well-being over time (rural areas) ..................................................... 28Figure 2: Chart Showing the Stages in Targeting, Selection, ........................................... 69
Abbreviations, acronyms and terms
List of Abbreviations, Acronyms and terms used
AAV Actionaid VietnamCEMMA Committee for Ethnic
Minorities and MountainousAreas
Cyclo A bicycle-rickshaw, used asa form of passenger andgoods transport in cities inVietnam
DARD Department of Agricultureand Rural Development
Decree 36 Used as shorthand in thisdocument for Decree 36-CP(May 1995) on EnsuringTraffic Order and Safety onRoads and in Urban Centers
DOE Department of EducationDOH Department of HealthDOLISA Department of Labor,
Invalids and Social AffairsGDP Gross Domestic ProductGOV Government of VietnamHa HectareHEPR Hunger Eradication and
Poverty Reduction programHH HouseholdHYV High Yielding VarietiesMOLISA Ministry of Labor, Invalids
and Social AffairsMRDP Viet Nam Sweden Mountain
Rural Development ProgramNGO Non-Governmental
OrganizationOxfam GB Oxfam Great BritainPC People’s Committee
PCF People’s Credit FundPPA Participatory Poverty
AssessmentPRA Participatory Rural
AssessmentROSCA Rotating Savings and Credit
AssociationRTCCD Research and Training
Center for CommunityDevelopment
SCF-UK Save the ChildrenFoundation, UnitedKingdom
SDA Viet Nam Sweden HealthCooperation – Support forDisadvantaged Areas
Sida Swedish InternationalDevelopment Agency
UNDP United NationsDevelopment Program
USD United States dollarsVBA Vietnam Bank for
Agriculture and RuralDevelopment
VBP Vietnam Bank for the PoorVLSS Vietnam Living Standards’
SurveyVND Vietnam DongWU Women’s Union
Vietnamese Terms and Acronyms
MeasurementsCong local land measure in Tra Vinh (1000square meters)Sao local land measure in Ha Tinh (360 square meters)Thuoc local land measure in Tra Vinh (36 square meters)Gia measure of rice (1gia=20 kg)
OtherHo Khau Booklet issued to households conferring permanent rights
to residency in a particular areaHui local term for various types of rotating lending groupsKinh ethnic VietnameseLa palm leaves used for weaving in Tra VinhVAC (vuon, ao, chuong) literally, garden, pond, pigsty: a model of complementary,
subsidiary farming activities promoted in Vietnam
Current Exchange Rate
USD1 approximately equal to 14,000 VND
i
Executive Summary
This report compiles the findings from four Participatory Poverty Assessments(PPAs) which took place between July 1998 and April 1999. These PPAs involved morethan 1000 households in four very different parts of Vietnam in a process of research whichfocussed very clearly on issues of wellbeing and poverty. The studies were facilitated byfour agencies with considerable experience in qualitative research in Vietnam. Table 1:PPA research sites summarizes information about the four sites.
Table 1: PPA research sites
Lao Cai Province Ha TinhProvince
Tra VinhProvince
Ho Chi Minh City
Researchagency
Vietnam-SwedenMountain Ruraldevelopment Program
Actionaid Oxfam (GB) Save the ChildrenFund (UK)
Region Northern Uplands North Centralcoast
Mekong Delta South (major city)
Physicalfeatures ofresearcharea
Covered remotehighland villages andmore accessiblemidland villages.Mixed upland andpaddy farming
Drought- andtyphoon-pronecoastal area withvery poor soil.Some uplandareas furtherinland.Predominantlypaddy farming.
Typhoon- andflood-pronecoastal area withpoor agriculturalland.Predominantlypaddy farming andshrimp-raising.
Densely populatedurban area. Someareas with long-termresidents, otherswith more recentlysettled migrants andmore makeshiftshelter. Poorinfrastructure andutility services.Many parts flood-prone.
Number ofsites
6 villages in 4communes in 2Districts
14 villages in 7communes in 6Districts
8 villages in 2communes in 2Districts
12 Quarters in 6wards in 3 Districts
Populationcharacteristics
H’mong, Phu La, TuLao, Tu Di, Nung, Han,Dao, Giay and Man Doethnic minorities andKinh
Majority Kinh Mix of Kinh andKhmer villages
Kinh; high % ofhouseholds withtemporaryresidential status;one predominantlyChinese quarter.
A broader picture of trends in poverty and the socioeconomic conditions of theaverage rural and urban dweller will soon be available in the analysis of the second VietnamLiving Standard Survey. The PPAs do not give this kind of overview, but have a strongfocus on researching conditions in the most disadvantaged areas and on gathering the
ii
perspectives of the poorer households. This almost exclusive focus on the perspectives ofthe poorer groups may give the report an unbalanced feel: being poor, the respondents inresearch exercises often focus on deprivations and problems. This report should be seen asrepresenting the views of a subset of the population, the subset which has probably drawnleast benefits from the recent reforms and which encounters most problems in trying todevelop secure livelihood systems.
Changes for the better…
Given the levels of poverty experienced amongst the households in the research, itis heartening that one of the most striking findings is that livelihoods and living conditionshave, in the minds of the poor, improved notably over recent years. This finding is quiterobust in the rural PPA areas, with few households, perhaps 10-15%, reporting anydeterioration in livelihoods. This improvement is more widely reported in the accessiblelowland areas of Tra Vinh, Ha Tinh and midland Lao Cai than in the highland areas, wherechanges take place more slowly. Much of this improvement seems to be predicated on theability of rural households, even very poor households, to diversify their farm income baseso that their incomes are rising slowly and, importantly, less vulnerable to shocks and crises.The changes do not seem on the surface to be terribly dramatic – at a household level theymight mean that income sources have broadened from a unique dependence on paddyproduction 8 years ago to include a few pigs, some fruit trees and some trading activitiesnowadays. However these small changes signify important improvements in householdresilience to shocks. There is greater ambiguity in household responses to recent changes inHo Chi Minh City, with poor households more circumspect about reporting improvementsin well-being. For these households, there is no farm to fall back on and unless the familycan earn enough cash from either self-employment or wage-laboring, then there can be asevere consumption crisis.
Can the trend continue?
Although rural households speak with some optimism about the future, there aresome worrying signs. In all rural sites, new households are receiving less and worse landbecause most agricultural land has already been allocated. New households are oftendependent on the landholdings of their extended families to generate a living and, by andlarge, these landholdings are too small to support their consumption needs. In a rural sectorfull of off-farm employment opportunities, this might not be such a problem. However,households in both Ha Tinh and Tra Vinh comment on the difficulty in finding stableincome sources off the farm. In Tra Vinh, where landlessness is already a reality for somepoor households, the problem of how to make a living off the farm is already becomingcritical. In urban areas the fortunes of poor households are closely tied to the demand forunskilled labor and the potential for profitable self-employment. In the minds of the poorhouseholds who participated in the Ho Chi Minh City study, there are no strong trendsemerging. This might be partly because the urban sector has been more sensitive to therecent downturn in regional economic performance and so the last 5-8 years have seen moreups and downs than in the rural sector.
iii
Households define well-being first in terms of asset endowments
Having the wherewithal to generate a stable income which is sufficient to coverconsumption and robust enough to withstand periods of misfortune or hardship withoutselling assets or taking destabilizing loans is the single most important criteria which poorhouseholds use in defining well-being. Reducing this to basic assets, in rural areas thismeans adequate landholdings of reasonable quality, favorable ratios of laborers toconsumers in the household, cash to buy inputs and information to expand the farm base. Inurban areas, it means having a sound ratio of laborers to consumers and having thoselaborers generate an income. The higher the quality of the labor, the greater the chance of apaid job, but this reportedly requires a minimum of lower secondary education. Generating areasonable income from self-employment requires some initial capital to invest and afavorable environment in which to sell goods or, more usually for the poor, services.Households also perceived good, solid, well-located housing as an important feature ofwell-being. Being educated, knowledgeable, well-informed and having children who areattending school were included as a feature of well-being in all study areas.
But non-material assets are also important
Although not of prime importance, households place some priority on non-materialaspects of well being. The freedom from debt and the anxiety and, sometimes, humiliationwhich this entails is considered very important. Being respected in the community and notbeing regarded as inferior because of poverty is also often mentioned by households asimportant. Children in particular value domestic and community harmony and adults in allareas echo this finding, though less vociferously than the children. Participating incommunity and social activities is important to adults in all sites and “having friends” issimilarly important to children.
Households are still vulnerable to shocks and crises
Even the better-off households fear bouts of ill health which entail highexpenditure whilst simultaneously reducing the household capacity to earn. Costs includeexpenditure on consultations, treatment and side-costs, such as transport andaccommodation for relatives. Ill health was the most commonly mentioned reason whyhouseholds had become poorer in recent years and illness routinely leads to divestment ofassets and taking out informal sector loans, both of which have a long term impact onhousehold livelihoods. Failure of investments and poor harvests are also highlydestabilizing. In Ho Chi Minh City, having a drug addict in the family has severeimplications for household well-being.
Coping strategies draw heavily on the household’s own resources
Help is available in the community during times of crisis, and family, friends andneighbors are usually the first port of call for a household requiring assistance. But theamount of help available from these benevolent sources is usually limited, because poorhouseholds are often related to other poor households and live in poor communities. Mosthouseholds confront hardship by selling assets, such as livestock, taking loans, often at high
iv
interest rates, or by diverting household resources to cash-generating activities. Reducingexpenditure, by limiting food intake, by forgoing medical treatment and by withdrawingchildren from school, are also important coping strategies. Formal safety nets do not make amajor contribution to household ability to cope with hardship.
Social capital is important for poor households, but some poorer groups face exclusion
In most villages, there is a sense of obligation for fortunate households to providesome support for the less fortunate. This sense of mutual help is most pronounced in themore remote, less stratified highland villages, where the low levels of socio-economicdifferentiation mean that today’s better-off household may well need to call on assistancefrom other households at some time in the future. There is a strong possibility that helpgiven will be reciprocated in the future. This is less so in more stratified communities,where today’s wealthier household is more likely also to be tomorrow’s wealthierhousehold. Some forms of help which are underpinned by reciprocity in the highlands aremotivated by commercial imperatives in the more accessible villages: there is much moreborrowing at positive real interest rates in the midland and lowland study areas than in thehighland villages. Whilst the poor households are keen to access social capital whichprovides assistance in times of crisis, many of the better-off households are more interestedin cultivating social connections which help to access resources or jobs or which provideinfluence in local matters. This latter form of social capital is more dominant in the moreaccessible areas. Some households have limited access to social capital because they arepoorer, cannot afford to contribute to important community and social events and becausethey lack confidence in wider society.
Whilst the poorer might be looked down upon and their children regarded asundesirable marriage options, they are very rarely outcasts. Households who behave in away which invites community disapproval – for example involvement in drugs, crime orhaving children outside marriage – may live very much on the peripheries of communitylife. In areas of mixed ethnicity, those with limited language, literacy and numeracy skillsare likely to be marginalized and have less influence in local decisions though not totallyexcluded. Poor migrants are the only group covered in the study who face formal exclusionfrom certain activities. The poor households without permanent registration in Ho Chi MinhCity are not eligible for fee exemptions which apply to poor permanent residents and theyface very considerable problems in accessing formal sector financial services.
Village or ward management play an important role, but poor households feel they have littleinfluence over decisions
The village (or ward, in Ho Chi Minh City) manager came top of the institutionrankings in all study sites, which, in general, showed a bias towards listing formalinstitutions. The village or ward manager is elected and salaried, though remuneration isequivalent to only two days’ unskilled wages per month. In rural areas, he seems normallyto be male, but this is not true in urban areas. At the very best, this person can play animportant role in informing and genuinely consulting poor households and representingthese views to higher levels of the administration. In practice, there may well be practicaland other constraints to performing this function well. Poor households voiced strongopinions that their views were rarely sought and even more rarely acted on. They also felt
v
critically under-informed about their rights, their entitlements, about Government serviceswhich they should be able to access, about procedures for applying for services and aboutlocal plans and decisions which influence their lives. In Ha Tinh, there was considerableresentment of the local contributions which are levied to cover the costs of commune anddistrict administration and questions were raised about the transparency of localGovernment financing.
Women face disadvantages within the household
Although there is a Vietnamese tradition of allowing women to manage householdfinances, it seems male priorities are internalized in household-level, financial decision-making. Women repeatedly complained about the expenditure on alcohol, tobacco and over-extravagant contributions to social events, which are all male priorities, but felt unable tocurtail these expenditures. Women reported limited control over reproductive decisions,although women are expected to take responsibility for contraception. The studies suggestedthat women work harder than men, often beyond their physical capacities, and that theyhave very limited time for relaxation, socializing, taking part in community affairs orattending training courses or literacy classes. The studies also report that physical abuse ofwomen is commonplace and that wife-beating is often associated with alcohol abuse oreconomic stress or both.
Poor households identify their priorities
This report compiles the main priorities expressed by poor households across thefour study areas. These include:
• Prioritizing interventions which will increase and stabilize agricultural and off-farm incomes (improvements in off-farm employment opportunities was aparticular priority in all areas except Lao Cai);
• For poor migrants, equalizing access to government services is a priority,especially access to those interventions which poor households with permanentregistration are entitled to, such as fee exemptions for health and education andformal sector financial services;
• Improving the targeting of interventions towards the poor households,minimising the extent to which better-connected households receive preferentialaccess to services and resources, and improving the transparency of beneficiaryidentification for Government programmes;
• In all sites, prioritizing access to more information about household entitlementsand on Government plans, services, decisions and programmes;
• The need for infrstructural improvements, particularly those which providebetter access for isolated communities, is a theme which runs through many ofthe other priorities;
• In all sites, involving poor households in the decisions which affect them;
• Prioritizing interventions which help poor children to attend and completeschool;
vi
• For all households, but for the elderly in particular, improving access toaffordable health care was a priority; and
• For children, living in a secure and harmonious family and communityenvironment was priority.
1
Chapter 1: BACKGROUND
1.1 Objectives, Process and Methodology
Objectives
This report synthesizes the findings from Participatory Poverty Assessments(PPAs) carried out in four locations of Vietnam between September 1998 and May 1999.The PPAs were co-funded by the World Bank but organized and conducted by four agencieswith considerable track records in participative research in Vietnam: Actionaid, Oxfam(GB), Save the Children Fund (UK), and the Vietnam-Sweden Mountain RuralDevelopment Program (MRDP). These agencies, in turn, contracted out some of theresearch or writing tasks to local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), researchinstitutes or independent researchers and consultants. Agencies worked with the closecooperation or direct collaboration of their partner agencies in provincial and districtGovernment, with the result that this has been a strong capacity-building exercise for localGovernment agencies. The four PPA agencies work in four very different parts of Vietnamand so have been able to provide insights into the nature and dynamics of poverty in a verydiverse ranges of social, economic and geophysical situations All in all, more than 10001
households have been involved in carrying out this research.
Although the PPA findings are collated here as a contribution to the “ConsultationsWith The Poor” 20 country study, this has not been the primary objective of the research.The World Bank in Vietnam is preparing a major, new study of poverty in partnership withGovernment and other donors. This joint study will be finalized in time to share with all theparticipants in the 1999 Consultative Group (CG) meeting in December. Part of the analysisin the forthcoming joint poverty study will be based on new data recently collected duringthe second Living Standards’ Survey. The PPAs will complement the statistical data byhelping to explain trends emerging from the statistical analysis and providing informationon issues to do with poverty not covered by the quantitative data. The strong expectation isthat the combination of quantitative and qualitative information will allow for a deeper andmore representative analysis of poverty than would the quantitative information alone.
The four agencies participating in the study have also had their own programand/or advocacy objectives in carrying out the research. All of the agencies participating inthe field work have poverty alleviation programs in the vicinity of the study sites. They haveused the PPAs as an opportunity to improve their understanding of poverty in the local area,to train their local partners in participative research techniques, to try to broaden in thepoverty debate in the local context and to research specific issues in poverty. For allagencies, this research work is part of an ongoing relationship and dialogue with localGovernment and it is hoped that the research findings will inform the local authority povertyalleviation plans.
1 426 households in Ho Chi Minh City, approximately 350 in Ha Tinh, 250 households in Lao Cai and around100 in Tra Vinh
2
Methodology and Process
The research teams designed their own research plans and methodology. Theagencies conducting the PPA have many years’ prior experience in the PPA areas and werekeen to investigate areas of specific interest as well as gathering more general informationon well-being. Most agencies started with a review of their existing information on povertyin the area. From there they drew up a research framework which set out their current viewson poverty and some agencies identified specific hypotheses or research questions whichthey intended to investigate in further depth. All but one agency had reached this stagebefore a possible link to the Consultations with the Poor exercise had been identified. By thetime the Process Guide for the 20 Country Study was distributed, the draft research planswere already being discussed and teams had been identified. Some initial PPAs had alreadybeen carried out in Ha Tinh and a pilot study for the Ho Chi Minh City research had beenconducted to test questions and refine field techniques. Still it was felt that there would besufficient overlap between the PPA plans and the outline for the Consultations with the Poorexercise for the Vietnam research to make a valuable contribution. Each research team useda range of participative techniques, but did not adhere strictly to the Process Guide. Thesetechniques included mapping, socio-economic mapping, well-being ranking, problemscoring, pair-wise ranking, trend analysis, seasonal calendars, daily timetables, householdtimelines, cause and effect trees, institutional ranking/mapping and institutional strengthsand weaknesses analysis. The exercises were generally carried out either in focus groupdiscussions or during household level interviews. All of the teams held focus groupdiscussions alone with women. Views from the elderly, from children and from youngpeople were also gathered in separate exercises. Two of the PPAs (Ha Tinh and Ho ChiMinh City) were supplemented with quantitative household surveys and the Lao Cai PPAwas supplemented with a data-gathering exercise at the District level.
Agencies are now in the process of finalizing their site reports with their localGovernment partners. This process involves workshops in each of the PPA sites to presentfindings to local partners and to discuss how to build on findings in a concrete fashion.
1.2 Research Sites
The Country Setting
The socialist system, which was established in the North of Vietnam after thedeparture of the French in 1954 and which extended to the South after reunification in 1975,has accorded high priority to social equity, to poverty reduction and to the development ofhuman capital. In the education sector, the achievements have been quite remarkable: in1954 when the French left, the literacy rate was only 15%2 . By 1989, the Census indicatedthat 81.8% of women and 88.5% of men over 10 years of age was literate. Commitment toinvesting in the health of the nation’s population led to the development of a vast network ofprimary health care facilities which greatly increased access to health care. Life expectancyat birth is significantly higher (at 68 years) and infant mortality lower (at 41 per 1000 livebirths) than normal for countries of comparable per capita GNP (US$320 per annum). 2 Vietnam: Primary Education Teacher Project Stakeholder Analysis, by Gerard Clarke and Anna Christie,October 1998
3
Economically, however, progress in the post-colonial period was less satisfactory.Agricultural land was collectivized after 1954 in the North and, more haphazardly, after1975 in the South in a bid to eradicate some of the worst inequities which had developedduring the colonial period. Whilst equity goals may have been achieved, this policy also ledto catastrophic falls in agricultural output and severe hardship for the rural population,already stretched by many years’ of warfare. Within 10 years of reunification, it wasrecognized that central planning and state management of agriculture had been disastrousfor the economy and steps were take to renovate the economy with a series of doi moireforms. Now in 1999, previous shortfalls in agricultural production have been completelyreversed by returning the responsibility for agricultural production to the individualhousehold. Indeed, Vietnam is now a major rice exporter. There has been a removal ofearlier restrictions on private sector activities so that, now, a rural household may engage ina range of supplementary activities such as gardening, livestock raising, food-processingand trading and, importantly, may retain the profit from those activities.
The impact of the doi moi reforms on economic growth and poverty has been quiteastonishing. Figures collected in 1992-3 as part of the first Vietnam Living Standards’Survey (VLSS) suggested that the poverty headcount was 58% of the population. Data fromthe second VLSS is still being processed, but the early indications are that the povertyheadcount has dropped by 21 percentage points to 37% in a five year period.
The Study Provinces
The study sites were chosen to capture the views of poor households in a range ofdifferent circumstances: an ethnic minority upland area (Lao Cai), a poor coastal area (HaTinh), poor communes in the Mekong Delta (Tra Vinh) and poor communities in Vietnam’sbiggest city (Ho Chi Minh City. These sites differ in nearly all features: naturalendowments, ethnicity, population changes (because of resettlement and migration), recenthistory (two sites were under a different regime until a little over 20 years ago) and socio-political characteristics (especially relationships with central Government). The diversity ofsites makes the discovery of common themes across the study areas all the more interesting.Study Provinces are described below. Features of the study Districts, communes andvillages are set out in Table 2.
Lao Cai Province
Lao Cai Province was established in 1991 following the division of the formerHoang Lien Son Province. Lying on the boarder with China in the extreme north west of thecountry, the province consists of 8 districts, 2 townships, and 165 rural communes with atotal land area just over 8,000km2 (see cover Maps). The topography is strongly dissected,with the Red River valley and main road and rail arteries running through the center of theprovince. Mountainous districts surround this central corridor to the north east and southwest, consisting of numerous ridges and secluded valleys in which rural communities aresituated. Areas with steep slopes exceeding 25o occupy 84% of the land area and theelevation ranges from 80m above sea level. to 3,143m above sea level at the summit of FanSi Pan, the highest mountain in Viet Nam. The mountainous terrain and associated climaticshadow effects help to create a very diverse natural environment.
4
Lao Cai is home to 33 ethnic groups which gives rise to extremely complexpatterns of locally adapted land use systems and socio-cultural characteristics3. In themidland areas Kinh, Tay, Thai, Lao and Giay ethnic groups predominate. While Hmong,Dao, Nung, Phu La and several smaller ethnic groups tend to live at the higher elevations.The largest ethnic groups are the Kinh (approximately 35%), Hmong (20%), Dao (15%) andthe Tay (10%). Many rural communes and villages have two, three or more ethnic groupsliving side by side. The total population in 1998 was around 600,000 with rural populationdensities varying from as low as 50 persons/km2 in some remote upland communes(amongst the lowest in the country) to over 200 persons/km2 in the midlands. In recentdecades, there have been significant population fluctuations and movement of people withinthe province as well as migration of Kinh people from the lowlands to new economic zonesin the north. Lao Cai has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in Viet Nam. It is estimatedthat only half of the population over 10 years old can read and write. This varies very muchbetween ethnic groups: Kinh 95%, Tay 80%, Dao 30% and Hmong 8%. Female illiteracyrates are much higher than those for males especially amongst the Ha Nhi and Hmong.
The economy of Lao Cai is predominantly agricultural and subsistence based withover 88% of the adult labor force involved in agriculture. In the midland areas, were thereare greater market opportunities, farmers practice mixed farming systems including wetlandrice and rain fed hill crops, and intensive home-garden and forest-garden productionsystems combining livestock, horticulture, forestry and fisheries in some places. In uplandareas farmers are more reliant on rain fed agriculture. Maize is the main staple food crop inthese areas, but a wide range of other staples are grown including cassava, hill rice, potatoesetc. Forest land constitutes about 66% of the provincial land area, although only about 20%has forest cover, the remainder is under various forms of multiple use.
Lao Cai is the richest province in terms of mineral resources in Viet Nam. Otheradvantages include the abundance and diversity of plant communities, the potential fortourism development in upland areas, and the availability of central communication andtransport systems linking Lao Cai with Ha Noi and China.
Ha Tinh Province
Ha Tinh Province is located in north-central Vietnam about 350 kilometers southof Hanoi and stretches from the Lao Border to the South China sea, straddling the entirecountry at one of its narrowest points. The province is bounded to the north by the provinceof Nghe An and to the south by Quang Binh. Although Ha Tinh is a fairly newadministrative unit which was established in 1991 from the southern districts of Nghe TinhProvince, the area has a strong tradition of revolutionary activity. It has played host to anumber of anti-colonial rebellions and uprisings including the "Nghe Tinh Soviets". TheProvince was also a focal point for US bombing attacks during the 1960s. Ha Tinh Provinceis divided into eight rural districts (Duc Tho, Cam Xuyen, Huong Khe, Huong Son, ThachHa, Nghi Xuan, Ky Anh, and Can Loc), two towns (Hong Linh and Ha Tinh) and 262communes and wards.
3 CRES / EWC (1996), Development Trends in Vietnam’s Northern Mountain Region. National PoliticalPublishing House.
5
The total population of Ha Tinh Province is 1.2 million with an average populationdensity of 210 person/km2. It has a population growth rate of 1.6% (1996) which is belowthe national population growth rate of 2.1%. In 1997, 51% of the population was female and92% of the population lived in rural areas. The majority of people in Ha Tinh Province(99.9%) are Kinh. While most children attend primary school for at least some period oftime, only a quarter to a third of all poor and hungry children finish lower secondaryschool.4
Ha Tinh is a primarily agricultural province. In 1996, 57% of GDP was generatedby agricultural, forestry and fishery activities while only 11% came from industry andconstruction. Ha Tinh Province is among the poorest in Vietnam and the north-centralregion is the third poorest region in the country (after the North Uplands and CentralHighlands). According to data from the Poverty Alleviation Program of Ha Tinh Province,poor and hungry (very poor) households made up 27% of all households within the provincein 1997. Hungry households alone made up 11% or 30,200 households.
Ha Tinh Province covers some 6,000 km2 making up approximately 1.8% of thetotal area of Vietnam. Per capita agricultural land is only 0.47 hectares per capita5. Theclimate in Ha Tinh Province is particularly difficult and features a long dry season withmarked by frequent droughts and hot dry winds from Laos and a lengthy wet seasonpunctuated by flooding. In addition, typhoons often strike the province, sometimes causingheavy damage.
The province can be divided into four main agro-ecological zones. These zonesmoving from the coast to the Lao border include: coastal strip, delta/plain, hills, andmountains. The coastal strip stretches for 137 km and makes up 7% of the province's totalarea and is characterized by sandy and salty soil. The delta/plain zone lies between thecoastal strip and the hills and covers 54,000 hectares or 9% of the province's total land area.This zone includes most of the paddy land in Ha Tinh Province. The third zone iscomprised of gently sloping hills with elevations of 100 to 300 meters. and lies between thelowlands and the mountains. This zone makes up 30,000 hectares or 5% of Ha TinhProvince. Much of this land is unsuitable for cultivation due to poor soil, deforestation anderosion and only 36% of it is used for agricultural production. The last zone is comprised ofmountains from the Truong Son Range with elevations of 1,200 to over 2,000 meters. Thiszone, which occupies 480,000 hectares, makes up the bulk of land area in Ha Tinh Province(79%) although only 9.5% of it is used for agricultural purposes6.
Tra Vinh
Tra Vinh, situated to the Southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, is one of the poorestprovinces in the Mekong Delta. It is bordered to the North and the South by the Hau Giangand Tien Giang Rivers, both branches of the Mekong. To the East lies the South China Sea,along 65 km of coast, and to the West lies Long Vinh Province (which until 5 years ago was
4 "Socioeconomic Aspects/Study of Ha Tinh Province," Center for Natural Resources and EnvironmentalStudies: Hanoi, May, 1998.5 Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, 1998.6 Ibid.
6
joined to Tra Vinh, forming the province of Cuu Long). The road to Tra Vinh is generallygood, though peppered with bridges in various stages of disrepair, and the trip from HCMCcan be done in under 6 hours, including a ferry crossing.
The official population of Tra Vinh is 1.0 million (148,270 households), living inTra Vinh town and 7 districts: Cau Long, Cau Ke, Tieu Can, Chau Thanh, Tra Cu, CauNgang and Duyen Hai. The Mekong Delta area was under the rule of the Khmer until the18th century, which helps account for the large number of Khmer still living in Tra Vinh:over 29% of the population. There are also a number of ethnic Chinese (5-6% of thepopulation), and tiny Cham and Au populations. The number of “poor” households, earningless than VND90,000/person/month (USD6.50/person/month) is 33,545, of which 11,525households earn less than 60,000d/person/month (USD4.30/person/month)
The economy is based on the production of rice, and in recent years on fishing andaquaculture. The increase in rice yields over the last few years has been hampered by thepoor quality of the soil: generally speaking, the soils in the province are poor in terms ofwater-holding capacity and nutrients, and are severely affected by acidity and salinity.Though there are plans to develop the coconut sector for export, Tra Vinh’s distance fromHCMC and the lack of transportation make the enterprise exceedingly difficult. Overt 80%of the population is dependent on the agricultural sector. The total area of agricultural landis 145,000 hectares, of which 117,000 ha are devoted to rice, and 24, 490 to mangroves.People survive through small-scale subsistence farming, but are increasingly having to findother income-generating activities. The official unemployment rate is around 10%.
Recently people have poured a lot of energy and resources into the development ofshrimp and crab farming, but this has proven to be a highly volatile and risky activity (in1994/5, almost 100% of shrimp harvests failed completely!). There are several otheractivities, such as animal husbandry (mainly pigs and cows), mushroom-growing, pythonraising, handicrafts, and services, but these still very limited. Many people have to resort today-laboring, an occupation which provides highly variable income. And very little jobsecurity. Demand for labor is limited even during the high season, and on average, a personcan expect to work only 10 to 15 days in the month, for between 10,000 and 30,000 VNDper day. Income per capita across the whole province is thus predictably low – less than$150 per year – and access to health and education, or even clean water is limited.
Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam. It has 22 districts, 17 urban andfive rural districts (see map). Five new urban districts were created in 1997 (district’s 2, 7,7, 12 and Thu Duc District) continuing the process of absorbing more and more rural areasinto the Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area. Ho Chi Minh City is the pre-eminentcommercial and economic center of Vietnam and has an estimated population of six millionpeople. Six percent of Vietnam’s population live in Ho Chi Minh City and produce aquarter of the country’s gross domestic product. One third of all small enterprises and lightindustry and 35 percent of Vietnam’s trade are concentrated in Ho Chi Minh City. Largerfactories are generally located in the periphery of the city, rather than in the center. Thisincreasing urbanization of rural districts and communes is rapidly turning agricultural land
7
into building land for housing or factories. Agricultural areas in the peripheral districts ofHo Chi Minh City are shifting their farming activities to supplying the demand of thegrowing urban market for fresh fruits and vegetables. Urbanization of these areas is alsogenerating a market in rental accommodation for migrants who are moving into these areasto work.
8
Table 2: Summary of PPA Research Sites
LAO CAI PROVINCE HA TINH PROVINCE
Muong Khuong District Remote uplandDistrict with difficult access and weakinfrastructure. Population 39,859 with 15 ethnicgroups, but predominantly Hmong (38%) andNung (28%)
Bao Thang District Midland area with generallygood access and infrastructure. Population 91,516with 16 ethnic groups, but predominantly Kinh(75%)
CanLoc:rural,coastal
KyAnh:rural,mountains
HuongSon: ruralmountains
CamXuyen:rural,coastal
ThachHa: rural,deltaplain/coastal
Ha Tinh:urban,deltaplain
CO
MM
UN
E
Ta Gia Khau: Very remote- 35km from district centre.10 villages bordering China.Total pop approx 1700people, mixed ethnicminorites
Pha Long:Remote (20kmto District). Popapprox 1500people, mixedethnicminorities.
Phong Nien Non-remotecommune on main road. 18villages. Pop approx 6000people: Kinh, Hmong,Nung Dao, Phu La and Taygroups
Ban Cam Non-remote commune onmain road. 6villages, pop 2800people: Giay, Kinh,Dao, Hmong, Nung,Han, Phu La, Tay,Pa Di groups
Thi
nh L
oc
Thu
ong
Loc
Ky LamremotemountainsPop: 823hhs livingin 6villages.
Son Ham884 hhsliving in 14villages.100%Kinh. Poorinfrastruct-ure
CamDuong1400 hhsliving in 11villages.5km oftyphoon-pronecoastline
ThachDinh: 742hhs.Typhoon-prone. Noirrigation.
Dai Nai: 930hhs living in 8villages. 40%hhs involvedin agriculture,remainder inoff-farm work
Lao Chaiveryremote.Phu Lagroup; 28hhs
Thai GiangVery remote.Hmong, PhuLa, Tu La &Tu Di groups.41 hhs
Xin ChaiRemote. 100%Hmong; 49 hhs
Coc Sam1 On mainroad. 98%Kinh, 2%Nung. 71hha
Tan Hofairlyremote.100%Hmong. 54hhs. Newvillage
Nam Tang Non-remote village –13km to Lao Caitown. Linh, Han,Hmong, Dao,Nung, Giay, manDo groups. 73hhs.
3 vi
llage
s
Tra
Son
& T
hanh
My
Xua
n H
a
Hai
Ha
Ham
let 1
3
Ham
let 5
Ran
g D
ong
Tru
ng D
ong
Vill
age
4
Vill
age
8
Vill
age
4
Vill
age
1
9
Tra Vinh province Ho Chi Minh City
DIS
TR
ICT
Chau Thanh Relatively wealthy districtwith soil which is suitable for ricecultivation. Where good irrigation exists,can produce 2-3 crops per year.
Duyen Hai DistrictPoorest District in the Province. Coastal location. Sandysoils with poor productive potential. Limitedopportunities for non-agricultural incomes.
District 8: semi-rural,semi-urban District. Low-lying, crossed by 23 riversPop. 331,941, of which85% Kinh. Ha one third ofHCMC’s squatterpopulation.
District 6: Old establisheddistrict with an importantmarket, a major river port, abus station and someindustrial enterprises (nowmoving out). Pop 281,052hh, 30% ethnic chinese
Binh Thanh District:large, central District. Pop396,322 people. Has 2hospitals, 2 bus terminals,large port & an importantmarket.
CO
MM
UN
E Hoa LoiPoorest &
smallest commune.70% Khmer. Onerice crop per year.
Thanh My Richestcommune inDistrict. Pop 1453hhs, nearly 100%Kinh. 15 km southof Tra Vinh town
Long VinhPoor commune. HighKhmer population.Physically isolated fromDistrict centre. Saline soil.
Long ToanWealthier commune,bordering town. Landsuitable for ricecultivation. Goodinfrastructure
Ward 10:3748 hhs ofwhich 90%permanentresidents.Centrallylocated.
Ward 14:3769 hhs,more thanone thirdwith nopermanentresidency
Ward 8:poorestward. 4746hhs. 19%withoutpermanentstatus. 33%Chinese
Ward 14:poor wardwith 4124hhs. 28%withoutpermanentstatus.
Ward 12:highestconcentration ofmigrants inDistrict.Very poor.
Ward 21:Poor wardwith lowrevenues.Problemswith drugaddiction.
VIL
LAG
E
Da HoaNamPoorestvillage.147 hh,nearly100%Khmer
Qui NonA richervillage.Approx1500,half ofwhichKhmer
NhaDuapoorestvillage.162 hhs.Land notyetirrigated
PhuThoWealthyvillage.286 hh,ofwhichonly 14poor. 3ricecropspa
Kinh Daowealthyvillage with305 hhs in 6hamlets
XomChuapoorvillagewith 237hhs, 67%Khmer
Ben Chuoiwealthyvillage. 151hh, nearly100% kinh.11%landless
GiongGieng poorvillage. 110hh, nearlyall Kinh.36%landless
Qua
rter
3
Qua
rter
4
Qua
rter
2
Qua
rter
3
Qua
rter
3: u
nits
51
and
52
Qua
rter
4: u
nits
69
and
73
Qua
rter
2: u
nits
35
and
41
Qua
rter
5: u
nits
108
and
109
Qua
rter
3: u
nits
35
and
36
Qua
rter
4: u
nits
66b
and
69
Qua
rter
3:u
nits
40
and
44
Qua
rter
4: u
nits
54
and
55
10
Chapter 2: EXPLORING WELL-BEING AND ILL-BEING
All the research teams conducted well-being ranking in order to gather communityperceptions on what constitutes a good and bad life, and much of this chapter draws onanalysis based on these rankings. In all sites, the natural, financial and material assetendowments of households were dominant in defining the well-being status of householdsand in describing the different categories. This emphasis on asset endowments in the well-being rankings meant that there was a strong correlation between ill-being and poverty inthe strictest, material and economic sense. In all sites, the overriding deciding factor indetermining well-being was that the household had an adequate holding and spread of assetsso that basic consumption needs can be met. Nearly all the ranking exercises from all thesites included indicators of food consumption in distinguishing the households with highlevels of well-being (“no food deficit”, “enough to eat throughout the year”) from those withlower levels of well-being (often described in terms of months of food deficit). Because ofthe importance accorded to assets in the studies, this chapter begins by looking at therelationship between asset endowments and well-being and ill-being.
Non asset-based factors were also mentioned as features of either well-being or ill-being, but were not so important in rankers minds as to override the more concreteinfluences. Nearly always, it appears, it is the households who have inferior assetendowments who also often suffer the other, less tangible deprivations. These non-economicdimensions to well-being and ill-being include the degree to which households felt secureinstead of vulnerable, in the mainstream of activity rather than isolated and confidentinstead of fearful and humiliated. These influences were often raised tangentially outside themain well-being ranking sessions (for example in institution-mapping exercises or inproblem rankings).
2.1 Well-being and Asset Endowments
Table 3 (overleaf) uses the framework presented in the Lao Cai PPA to summarizethe patterns of asset endowment which are associated with well-being in the four researchsites.
11
Table 3: Categories of households in high well-being
Natural Capital Human Capital Social Capital FinancialCapital
MaterialCapital
Lao
Cai
Good agriculturalland. Distance andgradient an issue inupland areas, overallquantity an issue inmidland areas.Drinking andirrigation waterGeneral accessibilityand proximity tomarkets important.
Favorabledependency ratio;good health;language skillsand general“knowledge”.Domesticharmonymentioned as afactor
Highland:importantinformal supportnetworks forcoping withseasonal andunforeseen crises.Midland: socialconnectionimportant toupward mobility
Access tolivestock
Ha
Tin
h
Access to irrigatedland critical inrankings. Goodgarden land also animportant assetNo severe problem oflandlessness
Favorabledependency ratio;good health;education valued
“Connections”seen as criticalfor accessingservices. Better-off householdsare well-connected.
Access tolivestockHaving a regularincome, such as asalary or pension.Access to capitalfor investmentDiversified farmbase
Tra
Vin
h
Access either to largeamounts of irrigatedagricultural land orland suitable forshrimp-raisingLandholdingsbecoming moreconcentrated.Wellbeing associatedwith largelandholdingsAccessibilityimportant
Favorabledependency ratio;good health;education valued
“Connections”seen as criticalfor accessingservices. Better-off householdsare well-connected.
Having thefinancial capitalto either raiseducks or farmshrimp.Having access towell-paid work
permanent,strong housewith basicfurniture andequipment in afavorablelocation thedominantmaterial assetin all locations
Access totransport,motorbikesand machinerywere alsomentioned
Ho
Chi
Min
h C
ity
Better off householdsvoiced more concernabout theenvironment:pollution is a severeproblem in thedensely populatedareas.Location of houseimportant for accessto utilities.Some poor areasflood badly.
Having educationor marketable skillwhich allowsparticipation informal sectoremployment.Good healthimportant.Domesticharmonyimportant.
Educ
atio
n im
porta
nt: c
hild
ren
goin
g to
scho
ol o
ften
liste
d as
a fe
atur
e of
bet
ter-
off h
ouse
hold
s
Households withformalregistration,established linksand networks andgood localconnections areranked higher.
Having a stableincome,preferably aprivate-sectorjob. Havingaccess to formalsector credit.
12
Natural Capital
Land is very clearly the most important natural asset of rural households. It is notjust a simple matter of quantity, which divides the households with a good life from thosewith a more stressful life. Some of the notable findings and issues which are seen asdeterminants of well-being are identified in Box 1: Issues in landholdings below:
Box 1: Issues in landholdings
Quantity
Concentration oflandholdings in TraVinh, but greaterequality in landholdingsin Ha Tinh and Lao Cailand allocationproblematic for newhouseholdsaccess to commonproperty and forestrylands
In Tra Vinh, some better-off households havebought land from poorer households. In all ruralsites, established households have either more orbetter-quality land than the newly-formedhouseholds, because newer households are tryingto secure land after the land allocation andregistration has take place.
Having access to common property in Lao Caiand Ha Tinh was crucial to livelihoods.
Quality Gradient, soil quality,access to irrigation,drainage, proximity toresidence
In upland areas, having gently sloping land closeto the residence was associated with well-being.In lowland areas, access to irrigation is animportant determinant. In coastal areas, havinggood drainage and non-saline soil characterizedlandholdings of better-off households (with theexception of shrimp farmers, who generally wantsaline soil).
Type Paddy, upland, gardenland, coastal landsuitable for shrimpraising, suitability formostmarketable/desirableproduce
A mix of land which allows for subsistenceproduction and diversification into cash crops wasa feature of better-off households. Villages withadequate paddy land were described as better offthan villages endowed with upland. Having adeveloped garden is important for producing fruitfor sale. In coastal areas, plots suitable for shrimp-farming were considered more valuable than plotsonly suitable for agriculture.
Findings from Ha Tinh and Lao Cai suggested that for established households,land was distributed with relative equity with regard to quantity and there were no reports oflandlessness. Quality might differentiate household landholdings more than quantity forestablished households in these areas and these differences in quality could be important indetermining the range of crop and non-crop activities open to a household.
Quantity is an issue, however, in Tra Vinh, where concentration of landholdings istaking place along with a rise in landlessness. Households with large landholdings in TraVinh are usually considered to be amongst the better off. Quantity is also an issue fornewly-formed households. In all the study sites, land use rights to paddy land have been
13
allocated by the commune authorities. In some areas these rights have been formalized bythe distribution of Land Tenure Certificates. Although commune authorities are supposed tohold some land back to allocate to new households, in practice this is not always done. In allthree rural sites, newly-formed households had less land and poorer quality land. In LaoCai, the new households had particular difficulty accessing paddy land. In most instances, itseems, these households really only have the land which their extended family can give tothem. As a rule, it is rare to find new households in the top well-being category in studysites.
Although not explicitly raised by the households involved in the research, it isworth considering the possible future picture. Assuming a continuation of current trends,findings from the PPAs suggest that the future will see, in Ha Tinh and Lao Cai, either anincreasing fragmentation of landholdings as existing landholdings are divided to provideland for new households or a concentration of landholdings as in Tra Vinh as marginalfarmers sell up and move off the land completely. Landholdings in these areas can currentlyjust provide for consumption needs (best scenario) or can only cover consumption needs for6-10 months per year (worst scenario). The need for households in these areas to find eithersupplementary or alternative, non-farm income sources was raised by farmers in focusgroups discussions. This need is very likely to become more pressing over the coming years.
Human Capital
The quantity and quality of a household’s labor force and, importantly, the ratiobetween the number of active laborers and consumers in a household were importantdeterminants of well-being in all sites. Well-being in the study sites is strongly associatedwith having a favorable ratio of laborers to dependents and these households wouldnormally be well-established (that is, not newly-separated) with either grown-up childrenwho can contribute labor or with few small children (who demand home-based labor andincur considerable food, education and, sometimes, health expenses).
Education arose as an indicator in two senses. First, families in high well-beingcategories were said to have higher levels of “knowledge”, which covers a mixture ofeducation, access to information, skills and technical know-how. In ethnic minority areas,households with higher well-being can usually speak some Vietnamese and may be literate.In the rural context, this knowledge allows the households to develop more productive andstable livelihood systems which are more robust in the face of shocks. It means being awareof new opportunities and having the skills to take advantage of them. In the urban context,higher educational levels mean the possibility of higher-paid and more stable employment.The Ho Chi Minh City PPA suggested that completion of lower secondary levels ofschooling were the minimum requirement to access these kinds of employmentopportunities. “Knowing how to do business” was seen as an attribute of households in thehigher well-being categories in Ho Chi Minh City.
Education of children also appeared in the well-being rankings. Households in thehigher categories not only had adults with more “knowledge”, but were often described assending their children to school and, critically, their children were not being withdrawnearly from school. Moving down the well-being categories the criteria shifted, so that in the
14
bottom two categories, children were either not going to school or were dropping out ofschool at low levels of attainment.
Household status is an extremely important feature of well-being in Ho Chi MinhCity: well-being is very often associated with having permanent registration in Ho ChiMinh City. Without this status a poor household faces real problems of access to certainservices.
Good health is seen as crucial to family well-being because of the devastatingeconomic impact that ill health can have. This is discussed in some detail on section 3.1.
Domestic harmony was considered to be important in many of the well-beingrankings conducted in Ho Chi Minh City (and less so in Tra Vinh and Lao Cai), especiallyby children who were particularly concerned about parental quarrels and domestic violence.In fact, the children tended to be far more candid about some of the more emotional andpsychological aspects of well-being and ill-being. Many suggested that well-being includednot being looked down upon within the community, not immediately being suspected of anycrime and not feeling pushed around by better-off children. With the exception of domesticharmony, adults tended not to raise these topics very directly. However, interviews with thepoorer households certainly did often suggest a sense of inferiority.
The role of personalities and personal attributes such as diligence, dynamism,creativity and management skills were considered important in determining the fortunes of ahousehold. The Lao Cai PPA contrasted the responses of different poor households to theircircumstances and found that there are complex reasons underpinning household responsesto poverty which enter the realms of psychology, emotion and personality. More tangibly,perhaps, households in Ho Chi Minh City commented that migrants were sometimes lesspoor simply because their lack of safety net gave them a diligence the resident populationwas lacking or was able to get by without. The role of personalities is also expressednegatively in describing poorer households, who are often defined as lazy, poor managers oralcohol/drug-addicted.
Social Capital
Well-being included the opportunity to attend community and social events such asweddings, funerals and feast days, which, in all sites, carries a high economic cost. Well-being was also associated with having a network of contacts which facilitates access toservices and which provides an informal safety-net against some shocks and crises. Socialconnections appear to be important in accessing formal sector loans in both rural and urbanareas. In Ha Tinh, current well-being is also tied to past influence. It seems that somehouseholds who were influential during the cooperative period (until 1986) were sometimesable to ensure that the breakup of the cooperative asset base was skewed in their favor.Social capital is considered further on section 3.4.
Financial Capital
Livestock was considered a very important asset and indicator of well-being. Ruralhouseholds who are deemed better-off generally have more and larger animals that those
15
who are considered badly off. These are important productive assets, providing draughtpower for ploughing (buffalo), transport (horses) and manure for fertilizing crops as well asserving as a form of non-cash savings (especially small livestock such as pigs and chickens).Moreover, raising small livestock for sale is one of the few non-crop activities which thepoorer households can engage in
Table 4: Patterns of Household Livestock Ownership in Lao Caibelow shows howthe households in the upper well-being rankings own the larger share of the villages’ largelivestock.
Table 4: Patterns of Household Livestock Ownership in Lao Cai
DistrictMuong Khuong Bao Thang
Village Lao Chai Thai GiangSan
Xin Chai TanHo
NamTang
CocSam
Ethnic Group Phu La Tu Lao,Hmong,Phu La, TuDi
Hmong Hmong Kinh,Hmong,Dao,Han,Giay
Kinh,Nung
Location UplandMidlandMost Remote LeastRemote
No. H’holds 28 41 49 54 71 73
INDICATOR%total
%poor*
%total
%poor*
%total
%poor
%total
%poor
%total
%poor
%total
%poor
% HHs withcattle
46 11 86 10 17 6 4 0 6 3 4 2
% HHs withown buffalo
54 25 15 0 52 11 74 28
52 11 47
9
* Poor defined as the two lowest categories (III & IV or IV & V) in the village well beingranking
Access to stable, off-farm income sources emerged as a feature of households inhigher categories. Having a regular salary or pension, even if it was small, often placedhouseholds in Ha Tinh in the top category. The emphasis here was as much on the stabilityof the payment as on the overall amount. This contrasts with the discussions on day-laboring, which is often seen as an indicator of ill-being in both Ha Tinh and Tra Vinh. Inneither area was there a stable demand for day-labor – it still seems to be highly seasonaland largely agriculturally-based. Households seemed to see day-laboring as a step down inlivelihood security levels.
16
Having a good and stable income from employment was overwhelmingly the mostimportant element of well-being in Ho Chi Minh City. In the poor communities where theresearch was conducted, there is very little to fall back on in the absence of a cash income.Stable jobs with a regular income were extremely coveted.
Having a diversified farm base was also considered an important indicator of well-being: farming households with several non-crop, sideline activities not only had higherincome, they were also less vulnerable to failure of any one particular source of income. Thenarrow range of options for diversifying the farm base was one of the striking features of theTra Vinh study, where the only real options appear to involve considerable investment anda high risk of failure. Households who were able to raise funds to engage in shrimp-farmingor duck-raising were considered well-off.
Being able to access formal sector financial services which have favorableborrowing terms tended to place households in the higher categories. The PPA studiesprovided substantial evidence that, with the possible exception of Ho Chi Minh City, poorerhouseholds have great difficulty in accessing formal credit sources. Well-being also impliesthat households are managing to repay their debts. Freedom from indebtedness, and all theanxiety and humiliation which it brings to poor households, could also be considered anasset.
In Ha Tinh (and only in Ha Tinh), well-being was also associated with being ableto pay one’s taxes and contributions on time. This is discussed on section 4.2.
Material assets
Overwhelming weight was given to housing in the well-being ranking. In thesepoor areas, having a permanent, strong house with basic furniture and equipment close toone’s fields was considered extremely important. This may in part reflect the site locationswhich all feature particular problems connected with shelter: Lao Cai suffers fromlocalized, strong winds which destroy houses; Ha Tinh and Tra Vinh are prone to typhoonswhich destroy houses which are made of temporary materials. The migrant community inHo Chi Minh City have concerns over the permanence of their settlement because theauthorities have identified certain areas for clearance and upgrading. In Ho Chi Minh City,location on a main road or alley was far more favorable since it provided greater access topublic utilities.
Other material assets mentioned included motorbikes and machinery, but thesegenerally came some way after housing in the rankings.
2.2 Ill-being: Poor or Vulnerable Households and Their Asset Bases
Ill being was often described to the PPA teams in terms of deprivations: at least inpart, ill being was seen as not having the asset endowments which confer well-being. Table5 below shows the most frequently mentioned features of poor and vulnerable households.The identification of vulnerable groups within the households is based primarily on analysiscarried out by the researchers in the study teams. In the site information, respondents do not
17
routinely express the opinion that women and children are especially disadvantaged despitethe acknowledgement that women generally work harder.
18
Table 5: Typology of poor and vulnerable households
LAO CAI HA TINH TRA VINH HO CHI MINH CITYChronically hungryhouseholds with a severelylimited resource base
Households withlimited productiveresources, especiallyland and labor
Chronically hungryhouseholds with aseverely limitedresource base
Households with unstableincomes, few assets and poorquality, unfavorably-locatedhouses
Households withoutsupplementary, non-crop income
Landless poor withlimited off-farmemploymentopportunities
Households with low andunstable incomes
Nat
ural
, fin
anci
al a
ndm
ater
ial c
apita
l
Indebted households
crise
s Households suffering fromhuman or material crises
Households with sickmembers
Households with sick members ordrug addicts/ alcoholics orgamblers
Households and villageswith limited language andliteracy skills
Households withlimited education,skills and knowledge
Households withhigh levels ofilliteracy
Households with uneducatedmembers, without marketableskills and business acumen
Children not going to school, or dropping out of school before completion
Households with many children Households with many children
Hum
an c
apita
l,es
peci
ally
hou
seho
ldco
mpo
sitio
n
Newly-established households, elderly householdsand single-parent or separated households
Elderly households or householdswith disable members
Certain ethnic minoritygroups
Khmerhouseholds
Households in transitionfrom one location to another
Migrant households
VU
LN
ER
AB
LE H
OU
SEH
OL
DS
Cul
tura
l, &
phy
sical
mar
gina
lizat
ion
Remoteness Physicallyisolatedhouseholds
Households living on sitesscheduled for clearance
WomenWomen have less control over household resource allocation than men and cannot divert expenditure away from“men’s” expenditure (e.g. tobacco and alcohol) into expenditure benefiting other household members. Domesticviolence is commonly associated with poverty and alcohol consumption in the PPAs. They may also be used as acoping strategy (selling women for marriage to foreigners, marrying off sons, which brings in daughter-in-law asan additional household laborer).
VU
LN
ER
AB
LE G
RO
UPS
WIT
HIN
HO
USE
HO
LD
S
ChildrenIn times of hardship in all locations, children from poor households were at risk of being withdrawn from school.Women may also be used as a coping strategy to either reduce expenditure (sent away to live with another family)or raise income (child labor; selling babies for adoption).
In most instances, poverty and vulnerability were considered almostsynonymously, though it was recognized in the studies that some poor households werelikely to be more vulnerable than others.
19
Households with constraints in natural, financial and material capital
These households examplified in the box 2 below are poor in the strictest sense:they lack economic assets which means very often they cannot produce enough food to feedthe family. The narrowness of their household economy means they have not do not yethave sustainable means of covering this consumption deficit and they may have to resort totaking loans or reducing consumption in order to cover a hungry period. In all the ruralPPAs, houses with such a hungry period were placed in the lower wealth-ranking categories.In Ha Tinh, existence of a hungry period was used by respondents as a criterion in definingthe two poorest categories. The difference between the “hungry” category and the “poor”category was in the length of the food deficit and the range of subsidiary activities availableto households attempting to cover these deficits. These asset-poor households are veryvulnerable to shocks and crises, since their resources are already stretched in an attempt tomeet consumption needs. They are also more likely than others to experience shocksbecause their ranges of income sources is very narrow, thus leaving them exposed toconsiderable risk if those income sources fail. In the rural context, they are likely to befarmers producing only one or two crops and engaging in very few sideline occupations. Inthe urban context, they might be dependent on petty trading, rickshaw (cyclo) driving,portering or other highly variable income sources.
20
Box 2: Households with constraints in natural, financial and material capital
Poor household. Ho Chi Minh CityHuyen, married at the age of 21, and now 29, has already given birth to five children. Herfamily has a kind of tent for a home, which they put up beside the U Cay canal in district8. There is no bed, no mat, no electricity and no water in their home. Huyen’s husband isa healthy looking man, and works as a construction worker. This is a seasonal occupation,which provides barely enough money for him to “have the odd drink with my friends”.Their oldest daughter is 7 years old, but has not yet started school, because she has to helpher mother take care of her younger brothers and sisters.
Resource-poor household, Ha TinhViet aged 29, is married with two children and lives in Ha Tinh Province. His house is made ofbamboo and located on a hill with a 30 degree slope. His garden has mainly cassava and somelemon trees. There is little furniture in the house (2 beds, a table and some chairs, with a totalvalue of about VND100,000 – approximately US$7). The family cultivates 2.5 sao (900m2)of riceand yields 80 kg of rice from one sao (360m2). The family cooks meals once a day consistingprimarily of rice and salt. The parents eat only the rice left over after the meals, usually only oneor two bowls. If there is nothing left, they eat sweet potatoes. The children usually go to the forestto gather firewood and earn an average of VND5,000 (US$0.30) per day.
Two particularly vulnerable subgroups in this section are landless households andhouseholds which are indebted. Both landlessness and indebtedness are states which implyearlier economic problems which have been addressed through asset sale or loans. The Box3: The dilemma of poor farmers in Tra Vinh - The debt spiral, from the Tra Vinh PPA (theonly rural area covered by the PPAs where landlessness was a real problem), demonstratesthe process of a poor , landless household taking a loan, thus raising expenditurerequirements without raising income thus leading to higher disparities between income andexpenditure in the future. This appears to be particularly the case in Ho Chi Minh City,where interest rate for loans for the poorest and least creditworthy households can exceed50% per month.
21
Box 3: The dilemma of poor farmers in Tra Vinh - The debt spiral
A landless family of six living in Tra Vinh Province, has 4 laborers and 2 younger children stillin school. The father falls ill and is hospitalized, leaving only 3 wage earners contributing to thefamily income. The hospital costs are VND500,000 (US$35), which the family must borrow at aprivate moneylender rate of interest rate 10% per month. Because the family is landless, theonly way to earn income is through wage labor. The most typical form of wage labor in thearea is making leaf panels and digging ponds for shrimp farming for a few months (men only),which nets an average of about VND25,000 (USD1.8) between the three laborers per day(VND750,000 /month) (USD53.6).Minimum food costs (rice and basic staples) for a family of this size is VND17,000 /day (VND510,000 /month) (USD36/month). Other household expenses including cigarettes, alcohol,medicines, etc. average about VND 3,000 /day (USD0.2) and school costs average VND 3,000/day over the year for the 2 children in school, which includes money for breakfast, schoolcontributions, clothes, books and incidentals (total VND 180,000 /month) (USD13)Bareminimum family expenditures therefore comes to VND 690,000/month (USD49). But they mustalso pay VND 50,000 /month (USD4 interest on the loan they took to pay for the father’smedical expenses. Thus the absolute minimum expenditure per month for this family isVND740,000 (USD 53) f there are any other minor illnesses, mishaps in the family, or a failedshrimp season, they will have a cash shortage and will then either have to borrow rice on credit,sell labor in advance, or take out an additional loan from an informal lender. Their dilemma isobvious—they will never be able to repay the loan principal VND 500,000 (USD 35.7),condemning them to a spiral of debt from which they cannot escape.
Households facing Crises
Human and material shocks can quickly destabilize poor (and sometimes evenwealthy) households. These shocks nearly always have the effect of unexpectedly incurringhigh costs (for example, repairing typhoon damage to property), reducing income (forexample, crop or investment failure) or both (for example, ill health). In response to thecrisis, the household has to reallocate labor and financial resources, often taking out loans,selling assets and diverting labor from its normal tasks in order to raise more cashimmediately to cover increased expenditure requirements. The latter might involve takingchildren out of school. The range, nature and impact of crises is discussed further on section3.1.
Human capitalHousehold lifecycle and composition effects
The lower ranking categories nearly always include some households who haverecently separated from their extended family and established their own nuclear family. Thewell-being of these households is tied closely to the well-being of their extended family andthey will not usually be considered poor if they have set up their own home with asubstantial inheritance of land and other assets. Typically, however, they will have a small,poorly-equipped house and, depending on how the land allocation process has beenimplemented in the locality, may not have much land. The newly separated households are
22
joined in the lower categories by small, elderly households. The Ha Tinh PPA found asurprising number of these households living in poverty. Their extended families, whowould be the traditional welfare-provider for such households in rural Vietnam, are alsopoor and unable to support them. They are distinguished from the newly-separatedhouseholds by their prospects (their conditions are unlikely to improve) and their heightenedvulnerability to ill health.
Table 6 below considers some of the characteristics of these households asidentified in three of the PPA sites (household life-cycle effects were not drawn out as a keyfeature of ill-being in Tra Vinh).
Table 6: The Household Lifecycle and Poverty: the newly-separated households andsmall, elderly households
Lao Cai ProvinceOnly certain proportions of youngor old households in each villageare considered to be in the poorestcategories. For young, newlyseparated households, it dependson the land resources they are ableto acquire (which is increasinglyhard) and the level of debtincurred getting married orbuilding a new house. Thevulnerability of elderly householdsis tied to the well-being of theirextended families.
Ho Chi Minh CityThe elderly who live alone weredescribed as a particularlyvulnerable group. Thesehouseholds may have no children,or their children may have died orabandoned them. They cannotwork any longer and have nosource of income. They aredescribed by the PPA teams as: “poor, helpless, sad and lonely”.Newly-formed households are notdescribed as a particularlyvulnerable group.
Ha Tinh ProvinceNewly separated households areregarded as poor and vulnerable. Thiscategory made up more than 50% ofthe poor households in somecommunes. New households splittingaway from poor, existing householdsmay start with “little more than mudhut in terms of assets”Elderly households are often sick orweak and unable to supportthemselves. They are also often alonebecause their families have moved outand, in some place, the elderly familymembers have handed over the familyhome to the younger members and theolder members live separately nearby.
Newly-separated household, Ha TinhHoa, a 22-year old woman, and her husband, live in a small thatch-roofed house with their baby. Their househas almost no furniture. Her husband said: ’Before our marriage, we lived in the same house with our parents.They arranged our wedding, which was very costly and required help from us because our parents are poor.Now, we have started our new life. We were given 100 kg of rice which was my share from my family’s ricefields. We still owe some money for the wedding and for building this small house.” His father said: “my sonhad to borrow money and relied on support from relatives to build that house”
Elderly household, Ha TinhHa is aged 72. In 1972, his house was destroyed by bombs. His wife and one of his children died in the air-raidand he was wounded. He has 3 daughters who are married to husbands who live far away. His two sons aremasons. He himself works 7 thuoc (233 m2) of fields and each crop brings in from 60 to 70 kilograms of rice,but is not able to work very hard because of his age. He’s also got 3 sao (1500m2) of garden land with somefruit trees. As the garden soil is poor and he is not strong enough to work it very well, his income from it islow. He has received no support from his sons or daughters and suffers from occasional food shortages. He isunwilling to live with his sons “to avoid giving them troubles” or daughters because he says, "after marriage,they become members of their husbands’ families.” He is not a member of the local branch of the ElderlyAssociation as he cannot pay the monthly membership fee of 500VND.
Households who have many children and those that have few adult laborers, suchas single parent families, also face hardship. In rural areas, producing enough food to feed a
23
family, or having the diversity of income sources to cover consumption needs, requires asignificant input of adult labor. Similarly, in Ho Chi Minh City, covering basicconsumption costs requires either one large cash income (very rare amongst the poorercommunities) or several small incomes. Households with unfavorable dependency ratios areat a strong disadvantage in their attempts to cover basic consumption needs. Women-headedhouseholds are very often clustered in the poorer categories of the well-being rankings.Although less numerous in number, male-headed, single-parent households are alsodisadvantaged (Table 7: Households that have separated presents some examples from thePPA studies)
Table 7: Households that have separated
Lao Cai Provincends, single parent
households are nearlyalways associatedwith a death of one ofthe parents. Inmidland villages,there is a fairlysizeable number ofwomen headedhouseholds,particularly amongstKinh women fromfamilies that havemoved to the NewEconomic Zones.Single parenthouseholds are oftenin the lowest wellbeing category.
Ha Tinh ProvinceHouseholds with onlyone primary laborer aresome of the pooresthouseholds in Ha Tinh.These households aremore likely to befemale-headed (men aremore likely to migrateand widowed ordivorced men are likelyto remarry), but are notexclusively so. Nearlyall women-headedhouseholds visitedduring the PPA werepoor
Ho Chi Minh CityBeing a single parentled to great difficultiesin raising enoughincome to fund theentire family. Wherethe main breadwinnerhas been “lost” there isparticular hardship.Losing one adult in thehousehold wasassociated in the PPAwith withdrawingchildren from school.
Tra Vinh ProvinceIn Duyen Hai with oneexception, all women-headedhouseholds were ranked eitheras “poor” or “very poor”.Widows had difficultychanging the name on the LandTenure Certificate from theirdeceased husbands to theirown. Without formally holdingland, they had difficultyaccessing loans. Other widowsreported that they could notaccess loans simply becausethey had no husband toguarantee the loans.
Widowhood and poverty in Tra VinhMai is a 37 year old widow whose husband died in 1997 when she was 3 months pregnant. Unable to work whilepregnant, and struggling to raise 2 other young children, she quickly fell into debt and had to mortgage their landfor about 3 million VND to buy food. Life improved a little after she went to Ho Chi Minh City to work as adomestic servant between 1997-8, but she is still 2 million VND in debt. Mai currently goes out to work from6.30am to 5pm and lists her main difficulties as having the money to buy back her land, and then loneliness. Herolder daughter is now in grade 6 at school, while the younger daughter is still too young for school. When herhusband died, amongst the village institutions Mai cites as having been most useful to her were her neighbors, theWomen’s Union and then the health care service. Mai says that other households with more assets borrowedHunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction program (HEPR) funds, but she has been refused. When she hasapproached private moneylenders they also have denied her a loan claiming that she has no loan security becauseshe has no land and no husband. Her dream now is to save enough capital to raise pigs and ducks, while herdaughter’s dream is freedom from debt for her mother.
24
Education, literacy and technical skills
Limited literacy, numeracy, language and technical skills were consideredimportant features of ill-being in all sites. In Ho Chi Minh City, lacking marketable skillsmade a household very vulnerable in the face of an extremely competitive market forunskilled labor. In rural areas, households with poor literacy, numeracy and language skillsfelt they were vulnerable to being cheated in the market place. Lack of technical skills werecited as a causes of high rates of animal disease and death, low crop yields and restrictedhousehold economies, all of which increase household vulnerability and poverty. Where thePPAs found incidents of children not attending school, this was nearly always associatedwith poverty and the direct, indirect and opportunity costs of sending children to school. InLao Cai, there is also a relationship between ethnicity and educational attainment. Thisraises the prospect of poverty being sustained into the next generation as their endowmentsof lower quality human capital places the new generation of poor households at adisadvantage.
Cultural and physical marginalization
Newcomers to areas are often characterized in the PPA reports as having lowerasset endowments. The newcomers to Ho Chi Minh City – the migrant community – are asignificant poor minority. The difficulties they face in obtaining permission to residepermanently in Ho Chi Minh City means that the migrants, especially the poor migrants,tend to live on the margins of city life. Without the permanent registration, they are unlikelyto be introduced for a formal sector job. They are therefore likely to earn their livingperforming unskilled tasks in the informal sector where there is little security. They are noteligible to benefit from services made available under the Hunger Eradication and PovertyReduction (HEPR) program, which include low interest loans, free health care andexemptions from education costs. They are also not able to own property or to connect toelectricity and water supplies. In some instances, they live in migrant communities whichhave limited interaction with the resident communities. They are extremely vulnerable intimes of hardship or crisis because they lack the social connections and networks ofinformal support which the resident urban poor enjoy. Because they are unable to obtainformal sector credit, borrowing is normally always organized through informal channels.Reportedly, prices for such credit are high (up to 60-70% per month was quoted) andruthless means are used to ensure repayment. Of all the vulnerable groups covered in thePPAs, the poor migrant community probably face some of the greatest hurdles to escapingtheir poverty.
Newcomers are also suffering disadvantage in rural areas, such as Lao Cai and TraVinh, where there are households who have moved into New Economic Zones7. In Lao Cai,there are also households moving from one commune to another in search of better or moreland. These households seem to have less land, with dubious tenancy rights, than otherhouseholds. They are often farming the land that nobody else wants – the steepest land closeto the hilltops.
7 Following reunification in 1975, the Government established a programme which moved households fromdensely populated areas to less densely populated areas. This resettlement, planned, organised and controlledby Government, was the main form of internal migration in Vietnam in the 1980’s.
25
Physical remoteness was found to exacerbate vulnerability in Tra Vinh and LaoCai. Inaccessibility seemed to be correlated with lower overall asset holdings and anarrower range of income-earning activities. This then suggests a two-sided problem of firstbeing more likely to suffer a significant shock (because the limited range of activities meansfailure in any one has a greater impact) and being less able to cope with the crisis (becausethere are fewer assets to fall back on). As well as having low levels of natural and financialcapital, households in remote areas also suffer from a chronic lack of information about thewider world, about new techniques and sound practices. In ethnic minority areas, lowliteracy levels and inability to speak the national language aggravates this general lack ofinformation and sense of isolation. In some of the villages in Lao Cai, for example, eventhe village managers had very limited literacy and language skills. Their abilities torepresent their constituencies to high levels in the local administration are then limited andthe whole village may become marginalized. The Lao Cai PPA covered a Hmong village ina mixed-ethnicity, midland commune. Although the Hmong village was only 5km from thecommune center, it had very limited access to services relative to the other villages in thecommune: whilst the Viet Nam Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (VBA) hadbrought its services to the other villages in the commune, not a single person from theHmong village had taken a formal sector loan (see table 19). Similarly, the district Women’sUnion representative commented that this was the first time that she had ever visited thisaccessible village.
2.3 Trends in Well-being and Ill-being
Overall trends in well-being and ill-being
Poor rural households interviewed during the PPAs in Tra Vinh and Ha Tinhperceive a definite improvement in well being over the past five to ten years. In Tra Vinh,the 10-year timeline exercise indicated that 80% of households in the poorest study Districtfelt that their livelihoods had improved. When they look back, lowland farmers seecollectivized agriculture with low returns to the individual farming households. Thehousehold is now the main productive unit and households feel that they have much greatercontrol over their lives. Rural households, with the exception of the most remote, highlandvillages perceive a broadening in the range of income-earning opportunities which hashelped them to stabilize and develop their livelihood systems. They have their own land andthey are allowed to engage in subsidiary, non-crop activities and retain the profits. Theyhave also benefited from improvements in infrastructure, such as irrigation which improvethe productivity of their key productive resource: land. Significantly, for the households inHa Tinh, improvements in transport and better communication links with other parts of thecountry mean that it is now easier to migrate spontaneously (as opposed to being resettled inNew Economic Zones) and earn money in the urban areas. Many of the better-offhouseholds are receiving remittances from migrant family members.
26
Box 4: Trends in well-being and ill being in Tra Vinh & Ha Tinh
“Most people in Tra Vinh are better off than they were ten years ago. They havehigher incomes, more savings, better nutrition and health, more government servicesand more of their children are attending school (and staying there longer). Even whenremarking upon their personal problems, most respondents strongly confirmed thesetrends. In addition, it appears that the government’s efforts to target poor people(through HEPR programs and other services) have had some success. In addition,most people in Tra Vinh expect life to continue to get better”.“While overall poverty has been greatly reduced over the past ten years, most people inHa Tinh Province say they are still poor. Yet declines in poverty have been quitelarge, especially for households categorized into the lowest category, extremely pooror hungry. Overwhelmingly, the percentage of households falling into this category hasdeclined from about two-thirds of the village to less than half, meanwhile the numberof “better off” households has risen from almost nothing to about 10%”
In Lao Cai, the study team asserted that changes in the last 10 years had “created asituation whereby many households are currently engaged in a dynamic process of incomediversification, especially in the more accessible midland districts, which has had anoticeable impact on living standards in these more favorable areas”. These recent changesinclude:
• Land allocation and the return to household-based production systems;
• New market opportunities associated with increased spending power indistrict/provincial towns; and
• The availability of new sources of capital for investment.
There was recognition, however, that these positive trends were more evident in themidland than in the highland areas, and that poorer households were less likely to havebenefited as much as some of the better off households.
A more ambiguous picture of general trends appears from the poor communities inHo Chi Minh City: indeed, the quantitative survey which the PPA team carried out as acomplement to the qualitative research suggests that more than half the poorest householdsbelieve their overall well-being has deteriorated in recent years. Table 8 below illustratessome of the most dominant changes. Respondents were very worried about unemployment,which they judge to be a more dominant problem now than in the past. This is area-specific:close to the ports, wharves, warehouses, markets and enterprises, there has been an openingup in employment opportunities. Close to busy shopping centers or main roads, there areopportunities for earning money through cyclo driving, trading on the street or contractpiece-work. In other areas, enterprises had either mechanized, reducing the demand forlabor, or closed down, possibly as a result of the regional recession. Certain policy changeshave constrained livelihoods for the poor: street vendors are no longer allowed to trade onthe pavement as a result of Decree 368 and cyclo drivers are finding their routes curtailed asmore and more roads become closed to cyclo. In addition, there was considerable anxiety 8 Decree 36-CP on Ensuring Traffic Order and Safety on Roads and in Urban Centers, which stipulates thatpavements should be kept clear of itinerant vendors
27
amongst all groups in the community about the increase in social deviance, including drugabuse, alcoholism, gambling, prostitution and crime9. Improvements in infrastructure (inthose areas which have not been earmarked for clearance) were noted as a positive trend,but there are growing concerns about the overall environment and level of pollution, thoughthe poor were less worried by this than the wealthy. Poor households noted that educationcosts had risen in the recent past and that the poor were facing increasing hardship trying tosend their children to school. This meant that poor households were withdrawing childrenfrom school at an earlier stage. Although access to better-paid, formal sector jobs wouldrequire a minimum of lower-secondary education, children from poor households werelikely to drop out before this level.
Table 8: Trends in well-being in Ho Chi Minh City
CHANGES IN THEHOUSEHOLD ECONOMYOVER THE LAST 5 YEARS
VERYPOOR(73/73)
POOR(146/146)
AVERAGE(92/92)
BETTEROFF(98/98)
TOTAL(409/40
Improved 15 40 43 68 166Worse 41 68 25 13 147No change 17 38 24 17 96ISSUES OF GREATESTIMPORTANCE
(80/73) (155/146) (91/92) (84/98) (410/40
Having a stable job and income 15 24 17 7 63Children’s education 7 17 18 19 61Having enough money to cover
basic needs19 21 8 0 48
Repairing the house 10 29 0 0 39Taking/repaying a loan 17 14 0 0 31Social evils 0 0 9 17 26Flooding and pollution 0 0 7 9 16Other 12 50 32 32 126
(80/73) = number of responses/number of households
Individual household changes in well-being and ill-being: upward and downward mobility
Whilst overall trends for the average rural household suggest a gradualimprovement in well-being over the past few years, there are interesting patterns emergingof changes within the village. Some households are prospering more than others whilst anunfortunate few are becoming relatively, and possibly absolutely, poorer. Whether or not ahousehold sits on the solid black arrow of improvement (see Figure 1 below) or on a line ofa different gradient depends on a number of factors.
9 These activities are often referred to as “social evils” in Vietnam
28
Figure 1: Trends in well-being over time (rural areas)
General trend:improvements inwellbeing over timeas farminghouseholdsgradually diversifylivelihoods andtake advantage ofgrowingopportunities
Moving up:Sound
investments;responding to
newopportunities
Moving down:shocks and
crises, especiallyill health;
becoming old
wel
lbei
ng
time
Slow risers: lower initialasset endowments;unfavourable stage ofhousehold lifecycle; newerhouseholds.
Fast risers: high intitialasset endowments,especially land, labourand financial capital.Good social connections.Access to informationvery important.
Initialdifferencein well-being
The PPA findings suggest that households who have enjoyed the most rapid gainsin well-being over the last few years are likely to have started from a favorable position interms of overall household wellbeing. In particular, they are likely to:
• be at a stage in the household life cycle which allows them to invest labor innew activities or in intensification of existing activities
• have access to information about markets and new techniques
• in rural areas, have land and financial endowments which allow them to coverconsumption needs without resorting to selling assets or taking loans
• have access to garden land and space for sideline occupations
• have access to reserves or formal sector credit to invest in new activities. In allrural study sites, there was a clear consensus that access to the latter is generallyskewed in favor of the wealthy
• in urban areas, have permanent registration and a source of regular income
• in all sites, be healthy
29
Box 5: The Importance of Information in moving out of Poverty
Nga’s household 10 years ago belonged to level 4 (hungry), now they belong to level 1 (betteroff). They started off in a small house at the edge of the village left to them by their parentswhen they first began to live as a separate household. This house now has a tile roof. They havedeveloped their income and assets step by step. First they raised chickens, ducks, and pigs. Mr.Nga. Says "farmers need to know how to chose breeds". He learned this by reading books andparticipating in agricultural extension programs.He also grows oranges and from this he has earned an annual income of VND 1.5 million (USD107) for 4 successive years. His orange trees were stricken with blue fungus and yellow leafdisease so he switched to growing litchi planted with low-growing crops (peanut) providing himwith high output (the peanuts are harvested every 4 months). He twice obtained loans to investin tree cultivation and livestock, and he always repaid on time. Besides this, he also keeps 3 beeapiaries which provide him with an income of VND 1 million (20 bottles of honey). In thefuture, he is going to apply the VAC model because he thinks it is a stable and correct way to dobusiness.
Households on more gentle trajectories might well be facing constraints inbenefiting from the overall improvement in the general environment. The comment from aresident in Ha Tinh, “there are more opportunities than before, but poor people takeadvantage of them less”, has resonance across the PPA study sites. As an example,improved irrigation is said to have been an important reason why conditions have improvedin general for households in Ha Tinh. However, households who have less to invest in newvarieties and complementary fertilizers/pesticides, who lack information about the adoptionof high-yielding varieties and who face labor constraints in producing a second crop mighthave seen fewer gains from the infrastructural improvements.
Households experiencing sudden drops in well-being are almost always doing so asa result of some kind of shock or crisis. This is covered in the following section. Though notconstituting a widespread phenomenon, some households in both Ha Tinh and Ho ChiMinh City are reported to have reduced their relative well-being because of gamblinglosses.
Asset endowment, trends in livelihood systems and inequality
If a household’s climb in well-being is associated, in part, with their initial startingpoint, it follows that the more equal the spread in well-being across households at thebeginning of a timeframe (usually 5-10 years ago in these studies), the less the growth pathswill diverge over time. With the exception of the very remote, highland villages in Lao Cai,there was a sense of some widening of the gap between households. However, this is verymuch more noticeable in Tra Vinh and Ho Chi Minh City than in northern sites (Ha Tinhand Lao Cai). The PPAs revealed two factors which might potentially limit the degree towhich the gap between rich and poor is widening.
First, in the northern sites, the inequality in asset endowment at a village level isnot great. The key productive asset – agricultural land – is still available to nearly all
30
households and there are no descriptions in the Lao Cai and Ha Tinh PPAs of householdswho are effectively assetless. Inequality in quantities of paddy land distributed to differenthouseholds are likely to be small. The exception to this statement is the newer householdswho are likely to lose out on quantity and quality of land because these households arebeing formed since the allocation of land has taken place and their only access to land mightbe through their extended family. These households apart, the most significant differencesbetween households are likely to occur in terms of land quality, access to financial servicesand in human capital, all of which might be slightly biased in favor of the better offhouseholds. Securing reasonably-priced loans from the formal sector, including subsidizedloans apparently targeted to the poor certainly seems to be the preserve of the better-off andthe better-connected and there are notable variations in human capital, with the better-offhouseholds being favored in terms of quantity and quality of laborers. However, the overallpicture in the north is not one of great social and economic disparity. So although the better-off in a village are perhaps becoming even more better-off more quickly than the poorerhouseholds, the initial spread between these groups is not so great as to have generated asignificant gap so far.
The second factor which may have limited the development of a large gap betweenthe poor and the non-poor in Ha Tinh and Lao Cai is the fragility and vulnerability of eventhe better-off households to shocks. The better-off households in these poor villages have byno means reached the stage where their livelihood systems are immune to shocks and crises.Several of the PPA case studies demonstrating vulnerability described the demise of better-off households in the face of problems. It is possible that the high-risk nature of many of theinvestment opportunities which have opened up may be slowing down the rise of thewealthier households as the spiral of surplus-generation and capital accumulation ispunctuated periodically by destabilizing shocks.
The situation in Tra Vinh and Ho Chi Minh City appears to be rather different. InTra Vinh, access to land is reportedly far less equitable than in Ha Tinh or the paddy-growing, midland villages of Lao Cai. The report describes a group of households whoseonly assets are their houses and their labor. Their labor is unskilled and the demand for suchlabor is both limited and seasonal. There are descriptions of a contrasting group of peoplewho are accumulating land and generating a reasonable income converting the land intoshrimp-raising ponds which, with luck, then generate large profits. The picture is one of fargreater stratification than in the northern sites. Unless growth of non-farm enterprises leadsto an increase in the demand for the poor households only productive asset, labor, the futurecould see a widening of this gap.
The greatest growth in opportunities in all the poor rural area still seems to belargely agricultural. Even the day-laboring opportunities are predominantly seasonal andagricultural. This is manifestly not the case in Ho Chi Minh City. In Ho Chi Minh City,there are far more opportunities for getting richer through employment and setting up smallbusinesses. Households who become better off in this way, often become much better off:the gains from accessing and taking advantage of these opportunities are higher than thecomparable returns, in the rural area, to investing in a little livestock and an orange orchard.However, the barriers which the poor households face in accessing such opportunities seemto be more impenetrable than those faced by their rural counterparts. Part of the constraint is
31
legal: without permanent registration papers, formal employment opportunities areextremely limited and access to financial capital to establish a business is expensive. Thequality of human capital is also critical (completion of lower secondary school being aminimum requirement for a reasonably-paid job) and the poor households in Ho Chi MinhCity have lower education levels and are educating their children to lower levels. Whilst thecase studies in the northern PPAs suggest that the poorer households might incrementallybuild up their assets to the point where their livelihoods become more secure through,perhaps successfully raising some pigs, reinvesting the surplus and successfully raisingsome buffalo, reinvesting the surplus and successfully embarking on some small tradingactivities, and so on, this gentle path to a more stable livelihood is not described in the HoChi Minh City report. Bridging the gap between scraping a fragile, daily living and leadinga more secure existence seems to be very difficult for the urban poor, especially themigrants.
Factors which might increase differentiation between households
Many of the trends identified by the PPAs indicate that the future might see awidening of the gap between poorer and better off households, or indeed the gap in welfarebetween different groups. These include:
1) In Ho Chi Minh City, the immense difficulties associated with only having temporaryresidency status mean that poor migrants face unusual constraints in trying to developtheir household income bases. As long as the policy remains that they are to be excludedfrom certain services, then they will remain at a relative disadvantage. This is also aproblem in Tra Vinh and Lao Cai, where the populations have also been fairly mobile.
2) Poor households in Ho Chi Minh City repeatedly commented on the irony that the poorhad to fund more of the infrastructure around them than the wealthy. This observation isbased on the fact that better-off households tend to live on main roads or large alleys,where the government funds construction and repair works. Poorer households live deepin the narrow alleys, where pathways and lighting have to be provided by thecommunity themselves. Better-located households are more likely to be able to secureelectricity and water connections. Households deeper in the alleys tend to repurchasethese services from the wealthier households at a considerable markup.
3) The limited supply of subsidized, formal sector credit is accessed more readily by thebetter-off and the better-connected. This is the finding in all three rural project sites (inHo Chi Minh City the permanently resident poor have enjoyed reasonable access tothese loans). This has the unfortunate effect of leaving poorer households dependent onmore expensive, informal credit whilst the better-off households can secure cheaperformal sector loans. This constrains the ability of poor households to develop theirlivelihoods in a sustainable fashion. The pattern, in Tra Vinh and Ho Chi Minh City, ofthe poorest households being chronically indebted to the informal sector suggests adistressing downward spiral in well-being. Stories of taking new loans, at still higherrates, to pay off old loans, are commonplace amongst these poorest households.
4) The tendency for poorer households to withdraw their children from school before theyhave completed basic education suggests that the next generation from these householdswill also grow up poorer.
32
5) The practice, in Ha Tinh, of levying contributions on a per capita basis tends to bepunitive for the poor, since the poorer households are usually larger. Table 18 showshow the overall burden of taxes plus contributions is regressive in Ha Tinh.
6) The dynamic effect of richer households having better connections, which then bringsthem preferential access to services and scarce resources was mentioned in Ha Tinh as asource of inequality
7) The inaffordability of health care for poor households. Ill health makes poor householdsmuch, much poorer and poor households are more likely to have sick members. Thiscircle can be seriously impoverishing.
8) The absence of an off-farm private sector which could absorb some of the labor comingoff the land already in Tra Vinh (and in the future elsewhere) constrains the potential forhouseholds with limited asset bases to earn a cash income.
9) The low level of input poor households have into decisions which affect their livesmeans that decisions might reflect the interests of the better-off households more thanthe poorer households.
Factors which might mitigate against growing differentiation
On the positive side, households described trends which should make it easier forpoorer households to catch up with better-off households or, at least, not get poorer:
1) The freedom to migrate: in Ha Tinh, many of the better-off households were receivingremittances from elsewhere in Vietnam from household members who were migratingon either a long- or short-term basis
2) The recent push in Government towards improving transparency at the commune levelsmay help poorer households to have a greater input into decision-making at these levels.[Note: this was not raised by communities, but has been added by the author for the sakeof a more complete picture]
3) If a substantial off-farm private sector which raises demand for unskilled labor can bestimulated, this will provide a very useful safety net for poor households with limitedasset bases. This was mentioned by households in Ha Tinh.
4) Many of the actions listed under “priorities of the poor” would also have an equalizingeffect (see table 25).
33
Chapter 3: Vulnerability, Security and Coping with Hardship
3.1 Perceptions of Risk and Vulnerability
All the PPAs emphasized the vulnerability of poor households. The pooresthouseholds in all four areas have livelihood systems which are so fragile and finely-balanced that a small misfortune will destabilize the household for many years. The HaTinh PPA site synthesis report quotes R.H. Tawney’s well known reference, which hasresonance across all four research areas: “the position of the rural population is that of aman standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient todrown him”10. Findings from the Ho Chi Minh City PPA strongly suggest that this analogycould apply equally well to some of the poor, urban communities. Crises or shocks whicheither require immediate outlays of cash expenditure or which diminish already low andirregular income, or both, reportedly have long term effects on livelihood strategies andwell-being.
The most commonly quoted shocks and crises are presented in the table below. Ofall of these, illness, death of a main laborer, livestock disease and failure of an investmentappear to be particularly prevalent and destabilizing. Reports indicate that these mayrepresent a significant setback for even relatively wealthy households: the case study belowof household responses to ill health is from a family who was originally placed high on thewealth-ranking lists. For those without capital reserves, even the smallest economic shockmay have crippling results. As a woman in Ha Tinh said, “A poor harvest makes thingsunstable for three years. Recovery is only possible if all the crops are good.” Households inLao Cai suggested that it would take perhaps five years to recover from the death oflivestock. This is especially true for large livestock used for traction since this will haveknock-on income effect in future years as the household then has to either wait to borrow ananimal for ploughing and therefore plough at an unsuitable time or the household will haveto exchange labor for use of a ploughing animal, thereby reducing the labor available totheir own household.
10 R.H. Tawney; Land and Labor in China; 1966; p. 77
34
Table 9: Most frequently Cited Crises in the PPA research areasType of Crisis Effect Ha
TinhLaoCai
TraVinh
HoChi
MinhCity
* * * *Illness High indirect and directtreatment costs and loss ofincome through reducedlabor
Significant risk/high impact
* * * *Death of a laborer Funeral expenses and lossof income from labor High impact
HU
MA
N C
RIS
IS
Alcoholism, drugaddiction andgambling
High expenditure, reducedincome from lost income
* * *
Crop loss: Rats/miceor other pests
Reduced income *
Crop loss: landslide Reduced income *
CR
OPS
Crop loss: Weather(floods; droughts;typhoons; storms andhigh winds)
Reduced income * *
* * *Death ofanimals/animalepidemic
Reduced income; reducedassets and security Significant risk/high
impact* * *Failure of investment Reduced income: inability
to repay debts Highrisk
Very high risk
NO
N-C
RO
P,E
CO
NO
MIC
Unemployment Reduced income * *Damage to housing(weather; fire)
High expenditure typhoons
Fire;storms
Fire;siteclearance
MA
TE
RIA
L
Theft * *
Human shocks and crises
A long term illness or death in the family is one of the most frequently-mentionedreasons why households find themselves in severe difficulties. It appears that young familiesare especially vulnerable to this type of crises when one of the laborers is suddenly andunexpectedly incapacitated or dies, as shown by the following story in the box 6 below.Human crises such as these are also the major cause of households suddenly anddramatically becoming much poorer. This is especially the case when the household has togo beyond the commune (health centre) to the district or further afield in order to get
35
treatment for a serious illness. The Ha Tinh PPA reports that 57% of households becomingworse off, did so due to illness.
Box 6: Human Shocks death of a main labourerSeng (44 years old). Lao Cai ProvinceSeng is a widow who has two daughters (aged 13 and 17). Her husband died 12 years ago in1987. One day he went to his father's house to help him kill a pig which had a disease. Afterkilling the pig, they had a party and drank a lot then he came home to sleep. Five days later, hedidn't let her go to work because he knew he was going to die. After he died, she faced a lot ofdifficulties for many years. The children were still young, their house was damaged and theyhad neither buffalo, pigs nor chickens. The family still lacks food every year. In times of foodshortage she has to work for other families for 2kg maize to eat. She has also sent the 2nd childto work for a richer family in return for a small cow.
The case study in the box 7 shows the kinds of responses which a household mighthave to make in the event of ill health. This example is from Lao Cai, from a village wherethere is some community support but where there is little opportunity for external sources offinances. Where this family has sold assets and withdrawn children from school, a family ina more accessible area might have reallocated resources differently. In lowland areas whereaccess to larger loans from the informal sector is a possibility, this might be a first response.This will then have a knock-on effect as high interest payments, perhaps 10% in rural areasand up to 60% in Ho Chi Minh City, are added to the family’s expenditure requirements infuture years. laborer Whilst dealing with a labour loss (because the illness reduces availablelabour), the household then faces a need to generate higher incomes than previously in orderto cover the debt. In Tra Vinh, the PPA teams found households selling land in order toraise cash to cover the costs of ill health. This has clear implications for future income-generating potential. If a household has had to take out a loan as well as sell productiveassets, then the prospects for repaying the loan can be bleak. Both the Tra Vinh and Ho ChiMinh City reports describe a debt spiral which commonly traps the poorest households.
Box 7 : Human Shocks: the costs of ill healthNha (26 years old). Lao Cai ProvinceNha’s family has 12 members. They used to be one of the richest families in the village but now theyare one of the poorest. They have suffered two shocks in recent years. Firstly his father died 2 yearsago. So there are now only 2 main labourers in the family – Nha and his mother who is 40 years old.Nha has two young children. Two years ago, his daughter Lu Seo Pao also had a serious illness andhad to be operated on in the district and province hospital. His family had to sell 4 buffaloes, 1 horseand 2 pigs to cover the expenses of going to get treatment and the operation cost several million VNDbut still she is not cured. All the people in his community helped but no one can support more than20,000 VND. Moreover, Nha’s younger brother - Lu Seo Seng, who was studying in grade 6, had toleave school in order to help his family. Nha says that “If Lu Seo Pao was not ill, his family would stillhave many buffaloes, he could have a house for his younger brother and Seng could study further.
The situation of the household in box 7 can be illustrated by looking at the impact ofthe serious illness on other capital resources (Table 10).
36
Table 10: Constraints and difficulties in managing capitalendowments following a health crisis
The example of Nha’s family
Natural CapitalLand, water,forest...
Human CapitalLabor,dependents,health, skills...
Social CapitalFriends,relatives, socialnetworks...
FinancialCapitalCash income,savings,livestock...
MaterialCapitalTools,equipment,transport
ReducedProductionAnd food income
A SERIOUSILLNESS IN THEFAMILY OR LOSSOF MAINLABOUR
Changes in householdlabor allocation
WithdrawchildrenFrom school
Borrowingmoney or food
Emergencycommunitysupport
Reduced contactandLearning
Sell productiveassets (livestock)
DIRECT ANDINDIRECT COSTSOF TREATMENT(MEDICALCOSTS,FOOD, TRAVELAND TIME)
Deferredimprovementsto materialwell-being
This is a common pattern of knock on effects to a serious illness, whereby thehousehold has to mobilize assets to cover the costs of obtaining treatment, or they borrow orsell their labor, altering allocation patterns of household labor. In Lao Cai, withdrawingchildren from school is also a common response to such situations which, of course, haslonger term consequences for the individual and household opportunities. As noted above,this mainly happens when a household needs to cover the direct and indirect costs oftreatment at the district (including transport, food, medicines etc.). Many poor householdswill not even consider taking this step in the first place. Both the Lao Cai and Ho Chi MinhCity teams found people living with ill-health on a long term basis because the costs ofseeking treatment were simply unaffordable.
There are many stories across the PPAs of the destabilizing impact of alcohol ordrug abuse. First, there is the effect of redirecting expenditure away from other items inorder to purchase the alcohol. Secondly, the more severe cases of alcohol abuse lead to areduction in household labor, which then reduces household income. Drug abuse, which ismost common in Ho Chi Minh City, is also associated with family members committing
37
crimes, which leads to increased expenditure as families have to pay fines. Alcohol abuse isvery often connected to domestic violence in the case studies and this has an impact ondomestic harmony and wider well-being.
Agricultural and economic losses
Several kinds of economic shocks and crises were recorded in the rural studyvillages including:
• Loss of crops due to drought, flood, storms, wind damage, landslides and pestdamage
• Loss of livestock due to epidemics
• Failure of an investment in new activity or an attempt to diversify the householdeconomic base.
In addition,
• Fluctuations in the labor market added instability to people’s lives in Ho ChiMinh City and a change in employment arrangements could leave a householdextremely vulnerable.
Failure of crops due to climatic conditions and pest infestations was a particularproblem in Lao Cai and Ha Tinh. Pests, insects and rats, had caused a serious reduction incrop yields in Ha Tinh. Poorer farmers were unable to afford to take protective measuresagainst such losses (see box 8). This reduction in rural income drives households to findalternative means of financing consumption. Households with diversified income sourcesmight be able to withstand this kind of crisis because there are other income sources to fallback on. The more restricted the economic base of the household, the more problematic thiskind of shock becomes. In areas where there is a well-developed labor market and infamilies which have a labor surplus, there might be an opportunity to make up a shortfallthrough day-laboring. Households with labor constraints and a very limited range ofeconomic activities often end up either taking loans, restricting expenditure (including foodand education) or selling assets to cover consumption in the short term. Taking loans usuallyraise future expenditure because of the interest payments. Even where loans are taken fromfriends or neighbors, there may be requirement for some kind of reciprocation in the future(for example, provision of labor at a future date). Selling assets constrains future incomegeneration and limits the household’s ability to withstand future shocks.
Box 8: Agricultural and economic losses
An's household had to leave the garden (about 300 m2) empty because rats had destroyed somuch of it in the past. His wife said that there was no income from potatoes or peanuts lastyear due to rats. They heard about rat prevention methods from Ha Tinh ProvincialTelevision, but they did not have money to invest in them. Mrs Lan said that the“destruction by rats nowadays is more severe than air-raids by B52 bombers.” [This areawas heavily bombed during the war with the USA.]
38
The loss of livestock can have serious consequences on the household economygiven the importance of these household assets and pivotal role played by livestock in thefarming systems of rural Vietnam. Livestock death and disease is considered to be one ofthe main factors contributing to poverty in nearly all the villages covered in the Lao CaiPPA and was also mentioned in Tra Vinh and Ha Tinh. Death of buffaloes limit futureincome because ploughing cannot be carried out at the correct time. Buffalo may also havebeen purchased with the assistance of a loan, which then may not be easily repaid becauseincomes have dropped. In the absence of viable mechanisms for cash savings in the ruralareas, small livestock are commonly used as a form of savings to be divested when cash isneeded. Death of chickens and pigs therefore make it more difficult to even out thefluctuating flows of income and expenditure over the course of the year.
Failure of an investment, especially when funded by a loan, can leave a family inan extremely vulnerable position. Some of the most dramatic examples of this are providedby the Tra Vinh PPA (see box 9). In Tra Vinh it appears that there are very limitedopportunities to diversify the household and farm economy. Poor households attempting todevelop a stronger economic base with multiple income sources do not seem to have a rangeof low-risk, low-input options to chose from. Agricultural diversification is limited by thepoor, saline soil and consequently households invest their surplus (or borrowed capital) intorelatively high risk activities such as duck and shrimp raising. If the investment fails, thehousehold faces an income deficit which will have to be funded through loans, alternativeincome sources (if available) or by selling assets. In addition, if the household took a loan inorder to fund the investment, additional cash must be raised to fund interest payments andthe repayment of the principal. In Ha Tinh, the PPA report suggests that 14% of householdsexperiencing a deterioration in well-being did so as a result of a failed investment.
Box 9 : Failure of an investment in watermelon production in Tra Vinh
Binh and Xay are 62 years old and have been living in their village for 3 years.They moved to the village from Tra Vinh town because their oldest son lives there. Because they donot own any suitable land, they have not invested much into shrimp raising, although they havecontributed to the oldest son’s shrimp ponds.Since moving to their village, they have planted three seasons of watermelon. They spent most of theirsavings on their first watermelon crop, which failed. A second watermelon season failed due to poorweather last year and simultaneously the 5000 shrimp they were raising died. For their 3rd watermelonseason they went into debt for the first time in their lives, buying fertilizer on credit. On the day wevisited, Mrs. Xay was almost in tears because she had just realized the melon seeds they had plantedthis year were bad seeds and that the melons, although ripe, were much smaller than she anticipated.This means there will be no profit from this third season: their investment of over VND1million willonly yield sales of between VND6-700,000 and she will be unable to repay the fertilizer retailer. Theirdaughter-in-law was 8 months’ pregnant at the time of our visit and Mrs. Xay said tearfully, “I don’tknow what we’re going to do”.
39
Material losses
In general, the loss of material property does not have such deep or lastingconsequences as human shocks or crises. In part this is because in most villages there arestrong informal community support mechanisms to help people out in such emergencieswhich can offset the high expenditures incurred. Box 10 below gives same examples.
Box 10: Material Losses in Lao Cai and Ha Tinh
Tha and Thanh in Lao Cai ProvinceTha and Thanh have 1 son and 2 daughters and have lived in Lao Cai since their parents moved to theNew Economic Zone. In early 1998 their house burnt down completely. As Tha says “everything wasin the fire even the chopsticks”. Now this family is in Category 4 relatively in the well-being rankinglist. When the house was burnt, they received 900,000 VND from the commune. They also got laborsupport from the neighbors to rebuild the house with 3 rooms and a tile roof. Tha’s parents gave themmoney to buy some bricks. Then in 1999 they borrowed 5 million VND from the Bank of Agriculturefor which they had to mortgage the new house. The village leader trusted their capacity. They took theloan to buy rice and bought buffalo and fertilizer to invest in production. Tha’s brother gave him amother pig which has given birth to 9 small piglets.
Vu, Nhan Loc Commune, Ha TinhTyphoons have also effected Vu’s family severely. High winds caused damage to her thatchedhouse this August: friends helped them conduct the repairs. The house collapsed due to stormdamage in 1992. They had to borrow 100,000 dong to rebuild it but were able to pay back thisloan within a few months.
3.2 Livelihood Security
Livelihood security was mentioned in all the research sites as being a commonsource of concern and was usually discussed in the sense of having the wherewithal towithstand shocks. To the households involved in the PPAs it represents the mirror-image ofvulnerability. Cutting across the PPAs there is a consensus that households who are ablewithstand these kinds of shocks have one or more of the following:
• Some form of stable income, such as salaried employment, pension or regularsocial welfare allowance
• Inherited capital with savings or other assets which can be realized in times ofcrisis without threatening future consumption
• Diversified income sources
• Supportive community structures
Households with these particular profiles are universally at the top of the well-being rankings in poor villages and in no site did the profile of the poorer householdsinclude the characteristics which make the household secure: they were always in thevulnerable category.
40
Stability of employment and income
Stability of employment and income came up repeatedly in the well-being rankingsin Ho Chi Minh City and security was interpreted as having a secure job by a very largenumber of respondents. Stability of income seemed to be almost more important than levelof income and even children would comment on the necessity for a regular wage in order tohave a secure household. Most of the poor households are dependent on income sourceswhich have little security and some respondents suggested that this security had been furtherundermined in the last few years. The development of some industrial sectors has beenconstrained by the slowdown in economic growth in the region, which had led, for example,to lay-offs in shoe factories. This had a direct effect on poor households who hadregistration cards which allowed permanent residency. Poor, migrant households are lessdirectly affected by the contraction in the formal sector because they have considerabledifficulty applying for formal work without permanent registration in the city. Theslowdown in economic growth had also led to reductions in construction contracts whichhad squeezed some poor household incomes. Incomes from trading, a very important thoughmore variable income source for poor households, had been severely undermined byGovernment policy (Decree 36) which restricts the use of pavements for trading activities.Government policy had also limited earnings from rickshaw (cyclo) driving by restrictingthe routes which cyclo can use. The introduction of labor-saving investments in localindustry had led to a drop in demand for certain types of labor (for example, a local wheatflour processing factory was now able to bring wheat from the boats mechanically ratherthan using human labor). The influx of migrants had led to a resented drop in porteringrates, according to many legally-resident respondents. Whilst nearly all households wantedemployment that provided regular income, the interviews and exercises suggested this wasbecoming more elusive.
Having a salary or regular source of income was also considered important in HaTinh. Families in the top well-being category were often characterized by having either asalaried member or by receiving a Government allowance. Even though these allowancesare not large – perhaps about VND200,000 per month (approximately $15), the stability ofthe regular payment brings a real sense of security. There is a qualitative difference betweenhaving a regular job, which places a household in a high category, and selling labor on adaily basis, which often places a household in a lower category. Day labor brings cash atcertain times of the year (perhaps 25-30,000VND (or $2) per day for a man and 15-20,000VND (or $1.40) per day for a woman for about two to three months a year) but itdoes not seem to bring security. In both Ha Tinh and Tra Vinh, demand for day laborers issimply not dependable enough to make a sufficient contribution to household livelihoodsecurity.
Inherited Wealth
Rural households who have inherited wealth were usually at the top of the well-being rankings and were considered to be low risk in terms of their vulnerability to outsideshocks. These households might have cash savings or have assets which could be divestedin times of crisis. Whilst for a poorer household, sale of an asset would severely jeopardizeproductive potential in the future, the wealthier households might have more slack: they
41
could sell off one buffalo, for example, but as long as they have more than one buffalooriginally they still have traction power to plough their fields. Similarly households who arenot simply dependent on paddy production are seen to be able to confront shocks withoutsuffering severe losses in current and future welfare. In some of the poorest villageshowever, even the wealthiest households are at risk. One case study from the Lao Cai PPA(see box 9) described the demise of one of the wealthiest households in the village aftersuffering the double shock of the death of a main laborer and the illness of child in a shortspace of time. The household had to sell 4 buffaloes, 1 horse, two pigs, take the son out ofschool and had help from the local community in order to pay for the operation, which costseveral million Dong. The household is now one of the poorest in the village.
Security of Shelter
Security of shelter was a matter of concern to poor households in Ho Chi MinhCity who live on land earmarked for clearance and upgrading. Certain settlements are underconstant threat of clearance. This is compounded by lack of information about theauthorities’ plans, so that people simply did not know how long they would be able to stayin their current location. The insecurity related to shelter diminishes the investment whichhouseholds (and Government) make in the environment and the level of pollution wasdescribed as a problem by some. Threats to their shelter was a fear repeatedly raised bychildren in discussions about security (see box 11).
Box 11: Children’s perceptions of threats to security (Ho Chi Minh City)
Housing: House being “cleared”; house collapsing or flooding; neighborhood firesdestroying houses; eviction from rental property because parents have defaultedon the rent; low-hanging electricity cables causing accidents
Education: Being pulled out from school because parents cannot afford costs; school is closeddown; teachers beating and humiliating children
Domestic: Father drinking and beating mother; shouting and quarrelling in the householdSocial: Neighborhood fights; drug addictionSelf-esteem: being considered inferior by wealthier households; being beaten by richer
childrenEconomic: Unstable income; being hungry; having bad clothesHealth: Concern about mothers’ health and inability to afford good health care for parents
3.3 Coping with Declines in Well-being
Although the overall trend in Vietnam is one of improvement in well-being evenfor poor households, there are times when households have to cope with declines in well-being. Seasonal hardship is a feature of poor, rural livelihoods, and a range of copingstrategies are found in the PPAs to deal with seasonal shortfalls. Households also have tocope with unpredicted shocks and crises from time to time. In Ho Chi Minh City, poorhouseholds might have to cope with fluctuations in the demand for day labor or services
42
which they sell. The most commonly mentioned coping strategies found in the PPAs aredetailed below (Table 11).
What is striking about the coping strategies described by poor households is theoverwhelming role for actions taken by the household themselves. The community may helpto some extent, but these are all poor communities and the level of assistance available fromfriends and relatives and informal networks is generally limited to immediate but smallinputs. Similarly there are some formal safety nets which seem to operate rathersporadically. Where these have been provided they are undoubtedly appreciated, but theirplace in the overall picture of coping with drops in well-being is really very limited. As faras coping with hardship is concerned, the household has to look largely to its own resources.
43
Table 11: Mechanisms for coping with declines in well-being
Lao Cai Ha Tinh Ho Chi Minh City Tra VinhCopingmechanisms withinthe community
Some help available from the local community in all four sites
Formal safety nets Some formal safety nets available, though very limited in scope and irregular indistribution
Borrowing smallamounts of cash forday-to-dayexpenditure
Common strategy, but only small amounts available from friends or relatives atfavorable rates
Borrowing large sumsof cash fromneighbors
More difficult: poor households are often part of poor, extended families withlimited spare resources. In some villages, no household is well-off enough tomake large loans
Borrowing moneyfrom moneylenders
Only common inthe midlandvillages at interestof about 8-10% permonth
Reportedly common.High interest (20-70%per month) andrepayments ruthlesslyenforced
Not easy,because themoneylendersdo notconsider thepoor to becreditworthy
Selling assets,liquidating savings
Livestock Livestock Houses Land andlivestock
Find day labor,including migration
In highland, laborsold locally forfood.
If available:migration tourban areasincreasinglycommon
If available If available:somemigration toHo Chi MinhCity
Send childrenlaboring
May work on ownfarm or on others’farms
May sell lottery tickets,sell noodle soup, helpparents with piecework..
Withdrawing childrenfrom school at lowlevels of attainment
Mentioned in all four research sites as a strategy to deal with general poverty,unpredicted shocks and seasonal hardship.
Selling women formarriage and babiesfor adoption
Quite common in studydistricts
Selling blood Common: approximately VND150000(USD10) per time
Living with ill-health Especially in thehighland villages
Especially for migrantswho have no exemptionfor fees
Reducingconsumption
Mentioned amongst the poor households for all four sites
Gathering food orfirewood from theforest
Hunting, gatheringwild food
Gatheringfirewood forsale
Urban equivalent:scavenging in markets
Collectingleaves forweavingpanels
44
1993 1998
Number households 682 245Amount in rice Kg 25,968 11,230Amount in ‘000 VND --- 34,682
Ta Gia Khau Commune has been receiving food support from the government for the last 10years. According to the recent assessment made by the Commune Peoples Committee, thereare 64 households that need this support in the Commune. However, because of limitedsupply it is currently distributed to only 8 out of the 10 villages in the commune. In 1998,each person in the selected households got 5kg rice (at about 3500 VND/kg).
Mechanisms in the community
In all four study sites, the first point of assistance for poor households would befamily, then friends, then the community and most households would be able to get somekind of support from within the community. This might include access to small cash or foodloans, access to common property, the ability to exchange labor for food, cash or land or theability to borrow labor (for example, for childcare so that the parents can leave the house toearn money). These mechanisms are covered in the section on social capital.
Formal safety nets
There was little mention of formal safety nets in general, and no mention at all inTra Vinh. In Ha Tinh, there had been some tax reductions following a bad harvest. Thesewere not targeted: everyone benefited from the exemption whether they lost crops or not. Inall 6 study villages in Lao Cai Province, food is made available to some hungry householdseach year to cover critical food shortage periods such as pre-harvest. This is part of the statebudget and the food relief is handled locally by the Commune Peoples Committee. Box 12:Food Support in one District of Lao Cai Province shows the trends in food support in oneDistrict of the Lao Cai PPA study site:
Box 12: Food Support in one District of Lao Cai Province
However, the budget allocation is small and therefore cannot reach everyone. Itappears that although Commune cadres make a great effort to distribute this assistance tothe most needy households they are, in practice, having to exclude some households. Thetargeting of this food assistance is therefore based more on supply, rather than on theassessment of ‘hungry’ households, as shown by the following example in box 13.
Box 13: Food Support in Ta Gia Khau Commune in Lao Cai Province
45
Households were not aware of the targeting criteria and had not been involved inthe identification of beneficiaries.
Borrowing money and food
This is one of the most commonly mentioned strategies and is found in all the studyareas. As a coping strategy against a temporary drop in well-being, this borrowing is veryunlikely to be from a formal financial service provider: formal sector loans are not widelyavailable to the poor and even when they are, the application process is too arduous to makemoney available quickly. Poor households borrow in a wide range of ways. The Lao CaiPPA list 11 forms of credit which a poor household might try to access. The Tra Vinh PPAlists 9 different ways of borrowing. Table 12: Different forms of borrowing in Tra Vinh andLao Cai sumarizes these below.
Table 12: Different forms of borrowing in Tra Vinh and Lao Cai
Tra Vinh Lao Cai
Mortgage assets such as land Borrowing cash from relatives to repay backloans
Borrow large amounts from relatives orhelpful neighbors
Borrowing food from relatives or neighbors topay back in kind
Borrow small amounts from relatives orhelpful neighbors
Borrowing cash from relatives at no interest
Borrow large amounts from private moneylenders
Borrowing cash from neighbors with interest(4%)
Borrow small amounts from private moneylenders
Emergency borrowing from money lenders /neighbors (interest rate of 8% - 10% permonth)Borrowing livestock for ploughing
Join neighborhood hui (ROSCA) Borrowing manure for crop fieldsSeasonal borrowing of crop land fromrelatives or in other villages
Purchase shrimp fry and shrimp food oncredit
Purchasing food and materials on credit fromshopkeepers
Purchase rice on credit Borrowing from Agriculture BankBorrow from preferential governmentlending programs (HEPR, WU, VBP,Ethnic minorities board)
Borrowing from HEPR / VBA for livestock
Concerns were raised in the Ho Chi Minh City and Tra Vinh reports that somepoor households were becoming caught in a debt trap. They take a loan to deal with animmediate crisis, but this loan adds substantially to the household outgoings because of thehigh interest rates. They are unable to raise the supplementary income needed to pay for theloan repayments and have to take another loan to honor the first. In Ho Chi Minh City,moneylenders may choose to use thugs or the local Mafia to extract repayments from
46
defaulting households. Commonly, defaulting householders are taken by moneylenders tohire-purchase shops where they can obtain an item on credit, sell it and use the proceeds topay off the moneylender. Of course, this then leaves a larger debt to be repaid at highinterest rates. Taking loans in some instances was cited as a reason for poverty and somehouseholds were very reluctant to take loans in case they could not repay. These moreruthless tactics by moneylenders are not reported in the rural areas. The pressure to repaythere comes from the knowledge that if you default, you are unlikely to get another loanfrom anyone else.
Under the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction Program (HEPR) theGovernment attempts to make subsidized loans available to poor households. Whilst well-intentioned, this facility is not having the desired effect in many instances. There were somepositive examples of successful HEPR activities in Ho Chi Minh City, but the rural PPAteams rarely found poor households who had been able to access such a loan. (An exceptionto this was some poor households in Tra Vinh who had been given a loan without evenreally applying for it and had not been asked for any repayments.) Because it is subsidized,it is also in short supply and highly rationed. As such, those households with the betterconnections in the village tend to be best placed to apply for these loans. Additionally, thecriteria attached to these loans seem automatically to exclude their own target group. First,those without permanent registration are not allowed to received them. This eliminatesmany of the poor migrant households in Ho Chi Minh City. Secondly, the loans areavailable only for investment purposes, whereas the poor commonly have to take loans tocover health costs, education costs and consumption. Thirdly, those responsible forallocating the loans tend to exclude anyone they perceive as being non-creditworthy. Thisgenerally excludes the poorer households.
There often seems to be a psychological cost to being in debt. Many households,especially in Ho Chi Minh City, commented on the anxiety and stress that being indebtedbrings. In Ha Tinh, one respondent commented that women would be sent out to get thelocal loans from friends and neighbors which are often used to cover consumption shortfallsbecause the men did not like to appear desperate. They were more inclined to apply for theformal loans, dealing with the larger sums of money and the outside institutions.
Selling Assets
Households who have livestock will often have to sell them in times of crisis,though they may be quite reluctant to do so since livestock represent, often, a key source ofcash income. The Lao Cai PPA suggests that households will, as a first response to needingcash, generally attempt to divert labor away from farming to cash-earning activities inpreference to selling off livestock. In Tra Vinh, poorer households may sell off their land intimes of crisis, with profound repercussions for future productive potential given the lack ofday-laboring opportunities there (see Box 14: Landlessness in Tra Vinh). In Ho Chi MinhCity, households in crisis are seen to sell their houses, if they have them. They thendowngrade either to renting or buy a cheaper house.
47
Box 14: Landlessness in Tra Vinh
Poor landless people in both districts identify the mutually reinforcing problems ofreliance on day laboring and lack of productive resources as two of their most seriousproblems. Given the low returns today laboring, it is not surprising that this results in aninability to save money or develop the skills necessary to break out of poverty.In Chau Thanh, people perceived that the labor market is becoming more competitive, asmore poor and landless people enter it. While there is a higher percentage of landlesspeople in Duyen Hai than in Chau Thanh (18% vs. 10%), there is a higher percentage of“near-landless” in Chau Thanh (14% vs. 6%) than in Duyen Hai. It may be that high-risk shrimp farming in Duyen Hai has resulted in more rapid landlessness than in ChauThanh, and that the process is just beginning to be felt in Chau Thanh.Landlessness contributes to chronic indebtedness and extreme vulnerability. Most poortold team members that being landless is a “lose-lose” game; the longer one is landless,the worse one’s situation becomes. Therefore, the long-term landless in Duyen Hai havedropped further down the economic ladder.
Poor landless people in both districts have difficulty accessing services, and have fewopportunities to improve their lives. Landless labourers are likely to have less access to healthand other services because they are away from their homes working during daylight hours whencadres visit. As many landless people travel for weeks or seasons at a time, they also miss othervillage-wide services, such as credit applications or extension training requiring several daysinvolvement.
Laboring
Diverting labor away from agricultural tasks to cash-earning tasks is a commonrepsonse to decline in well-being in Lao Cai. A sudden need for cash in the upland areas,some of which are not highly monetized, requires some reallocation of household resources.If a household has surplus labor, then this can be used to earn money, usually doingagricultural tasks for wealthier households within the commune. Households who do nothave surplus labor, and this seems to be most, will be laboring possibly at a cost of loweragricultural returns at harvest time. Where this labor reallocation leaves a gap in the farmingsystems, there is an added incentive to withdraw children from school so that they can help.Day laboring is the main source of cash for poor households in Tra Vinh who have soldtheir land. However, it appears that the demand for labor is seasonal and not at all robust.Day laboring is not so much a coping strategy as a survival strategy in Ho Chi Minh City,where there is no agricultural land to fall back on. Poor households are always in search ofjobs which can provide regular income. Migrant households are less likely to find stablework because their lack of permanent registration in the City constitutes a real handicapwhen applying for jobs.
In areas where local labor markets are yet to generate sufficient demand forunskilled labor, some migration is evident. This is particularly true in Ha Tinh, wherehouseholds commented that the freedom to migrate was one of the most beneficial changesover the last few years. The analysis of the impact of migration on the household was moremixed, however. Whether or not the net result was positive for the remaining householddepended largely on the relationship between the remittances sent back (sometimes zero),
48
the reduced expenditure demands because of the reduction in mouths to feed and theadditional workburden (sometimes considerable) generated by the departure of a primarylaborer. Some villages had quite high rates of either seasonal or permanent migration.
Child labor
For some of the poorest households in both urban and rural areas, child laborprovides extra sources of cash in times of hardship (by working for cash) or providesindirect support by substituting for adult labor when adult labor is displaced from its usualtask (for example, taking on more work inside the house or on the farm in order to releaseadult labor to earn cash). In Ho Chi Minh City, the most common activities for childrenincluded:
• scavenging
• selling lottery tickets
• selling noodle soup or other food products on the street
• doing piecework at home or in small workshops (e.g. making toothpicks, plasticobjects, fake paper money for worship and religious rites, packaging incensesticks and polishing copper incense burners)
• working as domestic servants (mainly girls)
• portering
• mason’s assistants (mainly older boys)
In Lao Cai, children and young laborers from poor households are sometimes sent tolive with other households for a period of 2-3 years. In the host household, the childperforms accepted tasks for children, such as watching the buffalo, feeding the pigs andlooking after younger children. In return, the child is fed and the child’s parent may receiveyoung livestock to raise as payment. This is seen as a mutually beneficial arrangement: onehousehold receives needed labor whilst the poor household is able to minimize expenditureswithout depriving the child of food and receives payment in form of livestock. After a fewyears, the child returns to live with the parents again. Some child laboring was evident inTra Vinh (sending children away to work as domestic workers) though the overridingproblem in Tra Vinh appears to be lack of demand for labor which perhaps is limiting theextent to which child labor is used as a coping mechanism. In Ho Chi Minh City,households sometimes sent children away to live in the countryside with relatives.
Withdrawing children from school
This was a common response to declines in well-being. Indeed, the Lao Cai reportfound that this was nearly always amongst the first responses to a crisis. There are manyreferences in the PPAs to the cost of education and the burden this places on poorhouseholds. These costs include the direct costs of fees, books, pens and the variouscontributions to insurance and construction funds. They also include the cost of clothing andfood. There are also opportunity costs in terms of the lost labor, though this varies accordingto the age of the child and across location. Where the perceived returns to education are low
49
because having a few years of often low-quality primary education is thought unlikely tomake a difference to future livelihoods, the very tangible costs of sending children to schoolmay soon begin to outweigh the perceived benefits. This is particularly the case in times ofcrisis when resources are so stretched than basic consumption is threatened.
Selling Blood
Selling blood, described in box 15 below, was quite commonly mentioned as acoping strategy in areas close to main hospitals. The amount raised from one visit to ahospital equates to one week’s worth of day laboring for one person, so the appeal is quiteunderstandable. The PPA teams found that some poor households were suffering healthproblems from over-donating blood. People in Ho Chi Minh City were commonly goingmore than once a month.
Box 15: Selling blood in Ho Chi Minh City
Selling women and babies
This was found to be reasonably common in Ho Chi Minh City, and there werealso isolated cases of selling women in Ha Tinh and Tra Vinh. In Ho Chi Minh City,women might be sold to Taiwanese or other foreigners for considerable sums of money (seeBox 16: Selling Woman in Ho Chi Minh).
Excluding the costs of the wedding and jewelry, the families of the bride might earnbetween $1000-$7000. Such are the sums of money that average and better-off families arealso attracted by this particular form of trade. There is also a fairly common practice ofselling women as temporary, local wives to foreigners resident in Ho Chi Minh City.Selling babies for adoption for between VND1-9 million (US$70–650) was also quoted as astrategy for poor households. Unusually, households might sell more than one child or evenconceive deliberately with a view to raising an income from adoption.
Thuy is 30 years old, and lives in a little house with her husband and three children aged 12,10 and 7. She sells noodle soup on the street, but cannot operate in one place as she used tobecause of the recent government regulations. She earns around 15,000 dong a day. Herhusband drives a cyclo which he rents for 3,000 dong a day. His income is low and irregular,particularly now that cyclos are becoming less and less popular. Sometimes, when herbusiness capital runs low, Thuy borrows money from a moneylender.The way Thuy has found of keeping the family afloat in times of difficulty is to sell her blood.She started doing this 10 years ago, when her own mother was very ill, and money wasneeded for her treatment. Since that time, she has sold blood very often, about twice a monthon average. On each occasion she earns 140,000 dong.
50
Box 16: Selling women in Ho Chi Minh
Trinh has seven daughters. Her husband is dead. A few years ago, her eldest daughter, Phuoc, gota job in a restaurant, and from there went on to prostitution, in order to support her mother andsisters. Two years ago, through the services of a broker, Phuoc was married to Taiwanese man foraround 4,500 $. One year later, another of Trinh’s daughters divorced her husband and married aTaiwanese man. Trinh’s house has now been repaired. It is in good condition and well furnished
Expenditure reducing strategies: living with ill-health and reducing consumption
Reducing the number of meals, reducing the size of meals and substituting inferiorfoodstuffs for preferred staples were all commonly mentioned responses to seasonal foodshortages and other crises which meant that household resources were stretched. Thisgenerates speculation that overall health may be affected in the longer term and that thequality of labor might suffer. There was no obvious pattern to certain members of the familysuffering particular nutritional deprivations: girls did not seem to be fed less than boys, norwomen less than men.. Additionally, households in both Lao Cai and Ho Chi Minh Citywere found to be living with ill-health on a long term basis in order to avoid consultationand treatment costs which would strain household resources.
Gathering food or products from the forests
In Lao Cai, men may go hunting in the forests to raise incomes. Children mightgather wild food, such as mushrooms and bamboo shoots. In Ha Tinh, households gatherfirewood for sale from the forest to the detriment of the environment. This raises very lowincome and is seen as an indicator of a poor household. In Tra Vinh, poor householdsgather local palm leaves to weave panels. In Ho Chi Minh City, children sometimesscavenge or beg for food.
Other, less frequently-mentioned coping strategies
Pick-pocketing and theft were mentioned in Ho Chi Minh City as desperatemeasures to raise income when all else had failed. There was some mention of more seriouscrime as a strategy for funding drug habits. There was little direct questioning aboutprostitution, but it appeared to be a regular feature of urban life in the study areas of Ho ChiMinh City and there were suggestions that a few girls of 16-17 years of age from poorhouseholds were using this as a way of earning a living.
3.4 The Role of the Community: Social Capital, Social Cohesion and SocialExclusion
All the PPAs considered the relationship between individual poor households andthe community and examined the networks within a community which would providesupport in times of hardship. Almost invariably, the community is the first point ofassistance for poor households facing some kind of crisis. They also investigated thecircumstances which might lead the community to exclude certain households from thesesupportive networks. Although there is little systematic exclusion of particular groups, there
51
are households who are more on the peripheries of village or community life. Thesehouseholds are often poor.
Social Capital and Cohesion
The community is an important source of immediate support for poor householdsfacing hardship. In all the PPA sites, there was some social capital which poor householdscould draw on, though in some instances, the level of help which could be expected wasvery small. This loose network of informal and formal social relations does help fragilehouseholds cope with certain crises and Table 13 below indicates some of the supportmechanisms available. Of all of these mechanisms, borrowing cash or food from friends andrelatives was the most frequently mentioned. Although these support networks are vital forpoor households, the overall level of support provided is quite small. For households facingserious problems, it will almost certainly be necessary to look beyond these morebenevolent sources to raise money.
Table 13: Community Support Mechanisms by site
Community support mechanisms SiteBorrowing cash, food or labor in times of crisis or hardship found in all sites
Membership of savings clubs or ROSCAs (rotatingsavings and credit associations)
Found in Ha Tinh,Tra Vinh and Ho ChiMinh City
Access to mutual or reciprocal assistance such as laborexchange for housebuilding; exchanging labor for food
Lao Cai
Community contributions to wedding and funeralexpenses
Found in all sites
Community-organized handouts or food parcels for thevery sick or elderly
Ha Tinh
Access to common property, for example for livestockgrazing or to forestry products for housebuilding or foodsupplements
Lao Cai
Moral support (for example, coming to help when ahusband is beating up his wife
Ho Chi Minh City
Sharing work or contracts Ho Chi Minh City
The Cost of Social Capital
Social capital, whilst performing an important function for poor households inVietnam, requires some investment even by very poor households. With few exceptions(such as support from one’s immediate family) these networks of support which they fallback on seem to be held together by complex webs of reciprocal arrangements rather thanbeing simply a form of handout. The PPAs suggest that poor households have to pay toaccess social capital, just as they pay to access any other capital (see
52
Table 14: Costs of ceremonies and social events in Tra Vinh).
53
Celebration Expected Contribution Death-days in community: In own household:
1 kg sugar or ½ kg MSG 500,000 dong/year
Weddings
Cash contribution:• 10,000 - 40,000 VND in Hoa Loi commune• up to 100,000 VND in Thanh My commune
1st birthday 10,000 VND Tet 600,000 VND
Table 14: Costs of ceremonies and social events in Tra Vinh
At every site (Tra Vinh, Ha Tinh, HCMC and Lao Cai), poor householdscommented on the cost of weddings, funerals, traditional ceremonies and celebrations. Thisincludes holding celebrations for members of their own families and making contributionsto the ceremonies of others. Table 10 indicates the kinds of expenditures a household mighthave to make for different events. Respondents reported that on average they would have toattend 20 such functions per year. A household might spend as much as VND1million(US$70) per annum on these expenditures and would rather go into debt to cover such coststhan not be able to contribute. This was also found to be the case in Ha Tinh, wherehouseholds reported taking loans at 10% per month interest to cover wedding costs. Whilstlocal officials often comment that communities are poor because of wasteful expenditure,the PPA teams, with the exception of the Ha Tinh team, felt that this was probably quiterational and necessary expenditure by poor households in order to ensure that they remainedpart of the community. It is the price one pays to remain in the community and to enjoy thesupport this can offer (informal loans; emergency help; the right to reciprocal laborexchange; the right to common property) in times of crisis. The Lao Cai team concludedthat:“the legitimacy of people’s position in local society and their ability in the future todraw on various forms of informal social support is dependent on “giving” at these criticaljunctures when they start a new phase of life- opening a new house,, or getting married.Borrowing for these special occasions is therefore a means of being able to give “a goodevent” in the short term, in the expectation that other people will help out in the future.”
Poor households definitely feel these costs are expensive - and there are somehouseholds who are excluded because they cannot afford to participate - but it is a form ofinsurance which cannot be provided by any other service provider. If willingness to pay isseen as an indicator, community social relations are clearly performing a function which isvaluable (even invaluable) to poor households. In Tra Vinh, the researchers felt that thehigh cost of investing in social capital meant that poorer households were able toaccumulate lower levels of social capital than better-off households. In the midland villagesof Lao Cai, villagers described poorer households as having “restricted social relations”and “few relations with outsiders and community”.
54
Variations in Social Capital
The Lao Cai PPA found that the nature and level of social capital varied withintheir study area. In some communities there is a strong sense of community spirit and a keensense of obligation for the wealthier households to help their poorer relatives and neighborsand this often seems to be the case in less stratified, long-established villages in thehighlands where there is only one ethnic group. The greater equality in the more remotevillages meant that there was a more cohesive community and more reciprocal help onfavorable terms: there is a sense that it is important to help households in times of needbecause the assisting household might need help itself some time in the future. In themidland areas, there is less chance that a wealthier household today will be a needyhousehold tomorrow and therefore there is less need for the wealthier household to invest inthese kind of reciprocal arrangements with poorer households. In more accessible areas,however, the role of social capital sometimes has a slightly different slant - connectionswhich allow string-pulling, preferential access to resources and a way to get ahead throughsocial connections for example. This form of social capital, using “who you know” as ameans of trying to improve household livelihood, was also seen to be very important in HaTinh and Ho Chi Minh City, and there are strong indications that this kind of social capitalis more readily accessed by the better-off households.
Long term, legal residents of Ho Chi Minh City who are living in establishedcommunities have some arrangements for mutual self-help, though there are alsocontradictory reports of deteriorating social relations. Finding work for friends and relativesor sharing work was reported. Some wealthier households help poorer households byproviding childcare whilst parents are out at work. Some households reported that neighborshad helped out in times of need and one woman reported that neighbors would intervenewhen her husband beat her. ROSCAs (rotating savings and credit associations) and informalsavings clubs were commonplace and there were also reports of communities workingtogether to upgrade their alley and pathways (though it is not clear that this was notenforced by the local leadership). The Chinese community was said to be particularlycohesive. But there were also reports of increasing quarrels and fights and there werecomments suggesting that people were keeping themselves to themselves far more than inthe past.
Social Exclusion and Problems with Community CohesionSocial Exclusion
There is no caste system in Vietnam and no formalized social structure whichmight lead to large numbers of people being treated as outcasts. With the exception of HaTinh, all the PPA sites had heterogeneous populations - in Lao Cai and Tra Vinh there aresignificant ethnic minority populations and in the study areas of Ho Chi Minh City peoplefrom all over the country are living close together. Still, however, social exclusion was nota main theme arising in well-being rankings or in discussions on poverty. Indeed, the HaTinh PPA team were impressed by efforts made by the community to include certaindisadvantaged members of the community.
But although the overall picture is one of general inclusiveness, there wereexamples of groups being socially excluded in all the PPA sites. In some instances, the
55
whole communities were excluded (such as certain migrant squatter settlements in Ho ChiMinh City and certain ethnic minority villages or hamlets). It is difficult to unravel socialexclusion from more general marginalization and isolation in some cases and some of theexamples below may really represent social neglect rather than conscious and deliberateexclusion. There are also cases of people being excluded within their communities.Exclusion was usually based on gender, ethnicity or migrant status. Where communitieswere relatively homogeneous socially, there was some exclusion on economic grounds. Thepoor expressed a sense of being inferior and, sometimes, humiliated because of theirpoverty. Even if they were not exactly outcasts, they took a position on the peripheries oflocal community life rather than the center. Table 15 summarises some of the types ofexclusion experienced by poor households.
Table 15: Summary of types of social exclusion experienced, in order of priorityTypes of exclusion experienced
By whom? SiteSense of inferiority leading toself-exclusion
The poor; migrants;some Khmer groups
Ha Tinh; Ho Chi MinhCity; Tra Vinh
Exclusion within an inner-cityenvironment
Migrant communities Ho Chi Minh City
Formal exclusion fromparticipating in certainactivities based on civil status
Migrants Ho Chi Minh City, TraVinh
Linguistic and culturalisolation
Ethnic minorities livingin a predominantlyKinh commune
Lao Cai; Tra Vinh
Exclusion based on economicstatus or practical constraints
The poor; women withheavy workloads
Ha Tinh; Tra Vinh
Exclusion within acommunity based oncommunity disapproval ofhousehold activities
Single mothers; drugaddicts
Ha Tinh; Ho Chi MinhCity
Sense of inferiority leading to self-exclusion
The Tra Vinh PPA suggests that the poorer households feel looked down on bywealthier households, exemplified by the case of one poor farmer who “went to buy some la[a kind of leaf] and the owner asked me how I could have the money to buy this. I felt veryashamed and didn’t go back again”. This lack of self-respect is compounded if householdsfall into debt. One woman, who had fallen into debt after an experiment with watermeloncultivation failed, said, “our debt keeps us up at night – owing money is an awful feeling. Itmakes me feel so terrible when they [the lenders] come to my housed to demand their moneyand I cannot pay it – I feel very ashamed that they are looking down on me”. One team feltthat the Khmer households in Tra Vinh had been stereotyped by their Kinh neighbors as
56
being poor planners and managers for so long that Khmer households had internalized thisprejudice and now believed it of themselves.
There were many comments from the three site reports in the Ho Chi Minh Citystudy which referred to the humiliation of being poor and the sense of inferiority which wasfelt particularly by poor children. Adults were often humiliated by their indebtedness andfelt unable to hold their heads up as they walked about the neighborhood. Indeed,humiliation was used as a tactic by money lenders to extract repayment from defaultinghouseholds. Children repeatedly expressed distress that the richer children looked down onthem and that the teacher humiliated them in school by exposing the fact that the parentswere behind in their payments. “The poor children are looked down upon by others andhave few friends. Children of rich families have many friends”, commented a group ofchildren interviewed. They were immediately suspected by better off households to beguilty if something had been stolen in the neighborhood and they were chased out of thewealthier peoples houses when they tried to go to watch TV. Many children seem to have nobirth certificates because mothers abscond from the hospital after delivery to avoid payment.Without the birth certificate it is difficult to register the child in school.
Exclusion within an inner-city environment and formal exclusion from participating in certain activities based oncivil status
The descriptions of the migrant population in Ho Chi Minh City (those who do nothave permanent registration, or ho khau) were strongly suggestive of social exclusion: onesite report commented on the derogatory names which were used by permanent residents formigrants from different parts of the country. Without the ho khau, households havedifficulty accessing public services, cannot enjoy exemptions from school fees, cannotsecure HEPR loans and cannot be introduced for a stable job. Interviewees from the migrantcommunity describe themselves as “visitors – eating and living in another’s place”. Onesite report describes an area known as the “tribal hamlet”. This is populated by householdswith no ho khau, although they have been resident in Ho Chi Minh City for up to 10 years.It is called the tribal hamlet because it is so infamous for poverty, muggings and drug abusethat no outsider will allow their sons or daughters to marry anyone from the hamlet. Youngpeople from within the hamlet are forced to marry from within their “tribe”. Communities ofmigrants living on the river (“floating migrants”) are also said to have very little contactwith the legally resident population.
Linguistic and cultural isolation
Whilst being less of an issue within any given community, cultural and linguisticdifferences were seen to contribute to the overall isolation experienced by the ethnicminority groups in the northern uplands. This was particularly true with regards to people’saccess to information. Where village level leaders were unable to speak or write Vietnamesewell, this meant that the flow of information down to the households was often constrained.Similarly, the ability for that community to represent itself to higher level, decision-makingauthorities was constrained. The effect is to make the whole community more introspectiveand introverted so they partly self-exclude themselves from wider society. The Khmercommunities in Tra Vinh expressed a similar sense of general isolation from the wider
57
Ms. Hien is 38 and a single mother. She had been living with her parents until lastFebruary. Now, she and her daughter live in a thatched house on a hill with one bed,separate from the village as she has a bad reputation amongst the villagers for having herdaughter out of wedlock. She has a small pig, which weighs about 15 kgs., four ducks andsome chickens given to her by her younger brother. She said she dared not raise too muchlivestock for security reasons. To meet the costs [of children's books, clothes, etc.], shehas to sell her paddy in the market and her family has to eat cassava and sweet potatoeswith a very small amount of rice for three months. She also has to sell chickens and pigs,borrow from relatives, or spend time laboring in order to earn enough to buy food.
world, explaining that the Kinh majority enjoyed higher levels of well-being because theytraveled more and had more exposure to outside ideas: “we hear about Tra Vinh [town] buthave no concept of it”. Khmer respondents reported feeling vulnerable when trading orgoing to the market because of their linguistic disadvantages and lower literacy skills. Theyfelt they had no way of knowing if they were being cheated.
Exclusion based on economic status or practical constraints
Although there were some examples of poor households been having activelyencouraged to participate in community life, there were also examples of the poorerhouseholds feeling excluded. One of the site reports from the Ha Tinh PPA (Thuong Loc,1999:17) suggested that the poor could not attend weddings and other social ceremoniesbecause they could not afford to bring money as a gift and they are too ashamed to attendwithout bringing money. The site report also mentioned that the poor were looked downupon and that “it was difficult for their children to get married when they grew up as fewpeople liked the children from the poor”. Several reports - Lao Cai in particular -commented that the very heavy workload which women struggled with prevented themfrom taking an active role in community and social activities. In some areas, women wereattending more events outside the home than before (especially in Ha Tinh), socializing wasstill considered to be mainly a male activity.
Exclusion within a community based on community disapproval of household activities
In Ho Chi Minh City, households with drug addicts were often avoided by otherhouseholds and stigmatized as being involved in “social evils”. One poor household had hadtheir application for school fee exemption turned down because the house was often rentedduring the day by gamblers. In Ha Tinh, women who had become pregnant outside wedlockmet with community disapproval and lived on the margins of the village (see box 17). Therewas no mention of the fathers of these children being excluded in the same way.
Box 17: Community disapproval: a single mother
Breakdowns in Community Cohesion: Conflict and Crime
Concerns over animal theft led to animals – horses and buffalo – being kept insidethe house at nighttime in the Lao Cai study area. Even manure was being kept inside thehouse in order to protect against theft. Households were aware that this was unsanitary, butfelt the potential loss from livestock threat was too great to take any chances. The threat of
58
theft here was seen as coming from outside the village. There had also been some reports ofwomen being tricked in the District town and being kidnapped and smuggled over theborder to China where there is a shortage of wives.
In Ho Chi Minh City local leaders expressed concerns over increases in burglariesand theft, which they felt was linked to a growing problem with drug-abuse. Migrants wereblamed for some of the deterioration in the law and order situation. Unemployment was alsodescribed as being at the root of some crime problems by increasing alcohol abuse which inturn increased the number of fights. It seemed to vary from ward to ward whetherhouseholds felt there had been an increase or decrease in fighting and burglaries. Howeverthere was agreement across the sites that there had been an increase in drug abuse. The threeHo Chi Minh City site reports make repeated reference to violence: domestic violence(mentioned especially by children); the use of physical force to extract loan repayments andfights within the neighborhood.
In Ha Tinh there were reported reductions in crimes against property and fightsfollowing improvements in local policing. Improved economic conditions were said to haveled to a reduction in theft. In addition, the introduction of improved irrigation facilities inone village had reduced conflict over water.
Conflict resolution and justice
Conflict resolution in the poor areas visited for the PPAs is overwhelminglyinformal. There are few formal systems for lodging complaints and the first stop for thepoor village or urban dweller is the Commune or Ward Chairman. If disputes cannot besettled satisfactorily at this level, then there is an office in the District which registerscomplaints and mediates in disputes. However, it is not clear how well these systemsfunction, how much they are used, or whether they are strictly impartial. Victims of crimemay approach the police or local militia, but this does not always ensure satisfactory follow-up.
There are no stories of poor households successfully bringing other people to trialin the PPAs. There are several stories of poor households going to the police for help, butreceiving none. One woman in Ho Chi Minh City, after being subjected to great abuse bythe moneylender to whom she was in debt, went to the police for assistance. It was theirview that they could do nothing because she owed money. Women seeking support in theface of domestic violence are generally referred to the Women’s Union, who then tries toreconcile problems between the husband and wife. Certainly women receive no support toleave an abusive husband.
59
Levels of Administration
Chapter 4: Institutional Analysis
All PPA teams conducted institutional analysis inthe research sites. Teams reported varying success withdifferent tools, but had most difficulty with theinstitutional ranking. Discussing institutions and, inparticular, their weaknesses is problematic in theVietnamese context. Vietnam has an extremely strongstate sector which reaches down to every village. One canspeculate that at times households might have been self-censoring. Poor households are dependent on goodrelations with the local administration to access servicesand resource. Under these conditions, there would be goodreasons for a poor householder to reign in the mostnegative views.
4.1 Informal and Formal Institutions
Perhaps because of the context and perhapsbecause of the questioning, many of the respondents saw“institutions” as formal organizations. In Vietnam, these are mainly branches of theGovernment administration (see right for structure), branches of the Party and massorganizations, which are affiliated to the Party. Table 16: Commonly mentioned formalinstitutions below indicates the most important government institutions mentioned byhouseholds in different sites. The level of importance attributed to these organizationsvaried considerably from site to site. In some places, certain mass organizations werethought to be unhelpful beyond the immediate family circle of the leader. In other locations,the same mass organization would rank highly for poor households. In the absence ofinstitutional mechanisms to ensure leadership quality, much seemed to depend on thepersonality of the individual leader in each location. The only common point from alllocations was the overwhelming importance of the village manager (rural sites) or the headof the household unit11 (urban sites) in people’s lives.
Table 16: Commonly mentioned formal institutions
Most frequently mentioned Sometimes mentioned Rarely mentionedVillage manager/head of the householdunit
Commune health services Agricultural extensionoffice
Commune/Ward People’sCommittee
Peasants Association Commune police
Veteran’s association (Ha Tinh) Elderly association (Ha Tinh) TeachersWomen’s Union (Ha Tinh) Women’s Union (Tra Vinh) VetsYouth Union Aquaculture extension (Tra Vinh)HEPR (Ho Chi Minh City, poor andnon-poor groups)
VBA (mentioned more by richthan poor)
HEPR (rural sites)
11 The urban ward (khu pho in Vietnamese) is broken down into several clusters of households calledhousehold units in the Ho Chi Minh City PPA (to dan pho in Vietnamese).
Provincial (or City)People’s Committee
District People’sCommittee
Commune (or Ward)People’s Committee
Village/HouseholdUnit manager
60
“It is clear that Government and Party institutions do play an important role in people’slives. In particular, it appears that the Village Manager plays a crucial role asintermediary between people and state which is perhaps why it was inevitably rankedhighest. For example, in Son Ham Commune, one respondent said, “for all matters,people go to the Village Manager to ask”” (Ha Tinh Province)
The balance between reliance on formal and informal institutions also varied acrosssites. Rural Vietnam does not have the range of civil society organizations which might befound in other Asian countries: the list of informal institutions which are important inpeople’s lives did not extend very much beyond those in the Table 17: Commonlymentioned informal institutions. In Ha Tinh, “relatives” and “neighbors” were not oftenmentioned. However, when they were mentioned, they were ranked very highly in terms ofimportance of assistance. The Tra Vinh PPA found that poorer households ranked informalinstitutions – mostly friends and family – above formal institutions and that this situationwas reversed for the wealthier households. This perhaps indicates greater disparity in accessto formal sector services in Tra Vinh than in Ha Tinh. There was a greater range of privatesector institutions mentioned in Ho Chi Minh City, where some companies were seen togive support in times of crisis. There, wealthier groups seemed to attach more value to theseprivate sector institutions than less well-off groups, perhaps indicative of better socialconnections. Migrant groups in Ho Chi Minh City produced an extremely limited list ofinstitutions in their analysis, suggestive of significant alienation from the normal institutionswhich other groups commonly interact with.
Table 17: Commonly mentioned informal institutions
Often mentioned Sometimes mentionedFriends and neighbors Savings groups and ROSCAsRelatives Food traders and input suppliersMoneylenders Private doctors
Within a household, it often seems to be the case that men will interact more withthe formal organizations and women more with the informal networks. For example, in onesite it was mentioned that men would generally be the one to take out a formal sector loan,whilst women are more likely to be sent out to ask for the community-based loans. Womenalso mentioned that they were overlooked by extension services in favor of their menfolk.Also, it is usually the man who attends the village meetings on behalf of the household.
4.2 Poor Households and the Administration
In Ha Tinh, Lao Cai and Tra Vinh, the village management was an important partof people’s lives. In Ha Tinh, in particular, the village manager came top of the rankings innearly all villages for nearly all attributes. In parallel, in Ho Chi Minh City the head of thehousehold unit was also seen as an important person who could help with applications for
61
fee exemptions and with introductions for jobs. These positions are elected and salaried,though the pay is equivalent to only one or two days’ unskilled labor. Generally, the villagemanagers enjoy the trust of the people. Higher levels of administration seem quite remote tothe households, who report little direct contact with the Commune officials.
Information flows, representation and voice
The village manager has a key role in disseminating information to the householdsin his/her administrative area and the degree to which this official has close ties with theadministrative levels above can determine to a large degree the amount and quality ofinformation which people receive about Government policy and services. As well as beingan implementer of Government policy, the village/household unit manager is also supposedto play a role in channeling information from the households up to the higher levels ofauthority. This seems to happen sporadically, if at all, and, with a few notable exceptions,poor households felt that their ability to influence decisions taken at a level higher than thevillage management was really very slight. There may be a number of reasons for this:
1) The village manager is not good at or may face very serious constraints incanvassing opinions, or believes them to be irrelevant: “they don’t invite me tomeetings, but they invite me to public works”, said one poor villager in TraVinh
2) The village manager may be selective in gathering feedback, dismissing theviews of the poorer households as ill-informed.
3) All village managers in the rural sites were men. There was no evidence fromany rural site that these men thought it necessary to consider women’sperspectives separately from those of their male relatives
4) Certain households or people might not have the confidence to speak up5) The village manager might be ignored by higher levels of the administration
because they believe the views he is presenting are irrelevant or because thevillage manager does not speak their language, they are unable to understandhim well
6) The village may be physically remote from the commune headquarters and theinteraction between the village and commune may be limited
The box 18 below from Tra Vinh suggests a certain sense of powerlessness andresignation by a householder who is losing land to a project he has been told nothing about,even though the consequences for his own household are significant.
62
Box 18: Lack of information, consultation and compensation: Tra VinhAt one time Tung owned 30 cong of land. A few years ago he lost 12 cong when a road was dugthrough the commune. Last year he lost another 13 cong due to the digging of the irrigationcanal. This land was not lying idle – his family had dug ponds and invested in shrimp and crabthat he was raising at the time. They lost everything.He knows that nobody who lost land due to this project will be compensated, and does not wantspecial treatment. However, he did feel that he should be compensated for his investments indigging the ponds and buying inputs for the crops. He was never invited to any meeting ordiscussion to be informed, and though he has submitted a claim to local officials, has had noresponse beyond being told to wait. “I know the government built the canal to help the citizens,but they should at least have taken into account the people who would lose their land.”
There may be similar constraints taking household views from the commune up tothe District. Certainly, the PPA discussions suggest people feel that their views are notlistened to or acted upon. There were many quotes in the documents along the followinglines:
“The policy of the party is that the people know, the people discuss, the people do, buthere people only implement the last part, which is the people do” (Ha Tinh)
and“I am glad I was invited to a meeting today, but do we get to talk? Usually we do notget to talk, we just come and listen to them talk.” (Tra Vinh)
The degree to which commune, District and Provincial levels of Government canfully represent the needs of poor households might also be constrained by their ethnic andgender biases. An analysis presented in the Lao Cai PPA shows how:
• The Kinh, Tay, Nung are generally well represented ethnic groups in both LaoCai PPA districts in relation to their overall share of the total population.
• In both districts, the Hmong particularly, and the Dao are the main ethnic groupsthat are under-represented in all sectors (and at Peoples Committee level in themidland area) according to their share of the total population.
• In a midland District, the sector departments are all staffed primarily with Kinhpeople (Health 49.3%, Education 58%, Agriculture 78%) to a much higherextent than their proportion of the total population (10%). The same is true inthe highland District but to a lesser extent.
• Women are greatly under-represented in the Commune Peoples Committees inboth districts.
• Women’s representation in the Health and Education sectors at district andcommune level is high in both districts.
• Women are, however, under-represented in the Agriculture sector.
Transparency and financing of local government
In Ha Tinh there were considerable complaints about the level of fees andcontributions levied by the local authorities. These contributions are on top of their
63
nationally-mandated agriculture tax, and took the households’ overall burden of taxes andcontributions up to about 25-40% of their total income. Furthermore, many of thesecontributions were levied on a per capita basis which, since poorer households are oftenbigger, had a regressive effect. Table 18 exemplifies the regressive nature of this burden.
Table 18: The Calculation of Taxes for Three Hypothetical Households
Assumptions `Poor` `Middle `Rich`No. of adults 2 2 2No. of children attending school 3 3 3Land allocation per person (sao) 1.3 1.3 1.3Total land area 6.5 6.5 6.5Average yield (kgs/sao/crop) 90 120 250Total yield (kgs/year) 1170 1560 3250Taxes kgs paddy kgs
paddykgs paddy
Agricultural tax 11% yield 128.7 171.6 357.5Commune and village tax 10% yield 117 156 325Residential tax 7 kgs/year/HH 7 7 7Total 252.7 334.6 689.5Commune contributions kgs paddy kgs
paddykgs paddy
Commune budget 3 kgs/laborer/year 6 6 6Security and defense 3 kgs/sao/year 19.5 19.5 19.5Natural disaster 1.5
kgs/laborer/year3 3 3
Transport/irrigation 4 kgs/sao/year 26 26 26Welfare (tinh nghia) 2 kgs/laborer/year 4 4 4School construction 7 kgs/person/year 35 35 35Education promotion fund 7 kgs/person/year 35 35 35Other construction fund 7 kgs/person/year 35 35 35Total 163.5 163.5 163.5Village contributions
Transportation/irrigation 3 kgs/sao/year 19.5 19.5 19.5Village budget 1-3 kgs/sao/year 13 13 13Rat killing 1-2 kgs/sao/year 9.75 9.75 9.75Total 42.25 42.25 42.25Total Taxes and Contributions 458.45 540.35 895.25% of Total Income 39% 35% 28%
Households say that they have little information about what their money is spenton. Where they feel that they are shouldering a high tax burden and yet they see fewservices and limited local development in return, there are some allegations about corruptionagainst local leaders (which the team were unable to corroborate). Mechanisms for appeal,if they exist, are ill-defined. People feel they have to pay the taxes without questioning: “Alldecisions are top-down. For example, decisions on contributions, fees, taxes and the like…
64
all the people could do is what they are required to do as informed by the VillageManager”. There were reports of officials going to collect taxes with the local militia, whothreaten to take the house door away if the household does not pay immediately.Households fear theft and do not dare to refuse.
It is interesting and notable that this was only an issue in one site. Since ethnicminorities are subject to a preferential tax regime, it is unlikely that the issue would arisethere. However, households did not mention that the tax burden was particularly heavy inTra Vinh either. It may be, as suggested by another recent study, that this particularproblem of poor households has a regional element to it.
Poor households, local Government and service delivery
Government services which concerned poor households most of all included:
• Health services
• Education Services
• Agricultural and aquaculture extension services, including vets
• Loans provided under the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction Programand by the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (VBARD)
There were complaints about all these services, but particularly about theaccessibility of the poor to these services.
Health Services, even in the highland villages of Lao Cai where exemptionsapplied, were perceived as being too expensive and poor quality. Many householdscommented on their preference for private services, noting that the private practitionerwould come to your house and would often provide treatment on credit. The distance tocommune health stations in some villages demanded a whole day traveling there and back, ahigh cost in terms of lost labor. Other households complained that health staff demandedpayment for drugs which are supposed to be made available free of charge under a nationalcampaign (for example, malaria medicine).
Poor households in both Lao Cai and Ho Chi Minh City were observed living withill health on a long term basis in order to avoid the costs of treatment and consultation. Thecost of health care was a particular problem to poor, elderly households.
Education Services were also seen to be neglecting some of the poorest groups. AllPPAs noted that poverty or food insecurity was the single most important factor in causingchildren to drop out of school at low levels of attainment. In Ha Tinh, where traditionallythere is considerable emphasis placed on the importance of education, householders werecomplaining that they were encountering problems covering their consumption needs as aresult of paying school fees and costs, which rise as the pupil moves up the educationallevels. The link between poverty and school dropouts is not limited to rural areas. The boxbelow indicated that poor families in Ho Chi Minh City are having difficulties covering thecosts of primary education. This is particularly true for those without permanentregistration, because they are not eligible for fee exemptions as the resident poor are. This
65
is compounded by a formality which demands that children must have birth certificates inorder to enroll in mainstream primary school. Many households in Ho Chi Minh City andTra Vinh had either given birth at home (Tra Vinh) or absconded from the hospital (Ho ChiMinh City) in order to avoid fee payment. They are then unable to obtain birth certificatesfor their children.
Box 19: Costs of primary education in Ho Chi Minh City
“Primary education is far from free in HCM City, and is in fact becoming increasinglyexpensive. The reduction of state subsidies some years ago means that parents have tocover more of the expenses involved than before. These expenses surpass the financialcapacity of the poorest families, particularly those with many children.The dilemma that many focus groups have identified is that the majority of poor familiescannot afford to send their children to school beyond primary level, if at all, and at thesame time they cannot afford not to, since they know that a low level of education islikely to keep them in the poverty trap. Unfortunately the impossibility of paying thenecessary school expenses is the overriding factor, leaving most parents and childrenwith aspirations that remain unfulfilled and without any prospect of a change for thebetter.One specific problem is the accumulation of expenses at the start of the school year,which poor families have great difficulty in paying at one time. Where there are morethan one or two children of school-going age in a family, often one child has to drop outof school to let another one in, or one or more children don’t go to school at all, or elsesome or all of them go to special free classes which are of inferior quality, and whichseldom provide them with the necessary qualifications or tools to get a good jobafterwards”.
Access to education is not only differentiated by economic status: the Lao Cai PPAfound that there are patterns of illiteracy related to: i) well being / economic status; ii) sex;iii) remoteness; iv) ethnicity.
1. Illiteracy isclearly higheramongst poorestcategoryhouseholdsaccording to thevillage well beingranking
Across the board, regardless of sex, distance, or minority status,poor households have lower literacy levels compared to the % forthe whole village. For instance, while 15% of households in ThaiGiang San have girls who are literate, none of these is from poorhouseholds (0%). Data from Coc Sam village provides even strongerevidence that literacy and schooling is linked to poverty. In thismidland, integrated and predominantly Kinh village, 93% of allhouseholds have males that are literate, yet only 27% of poorhouseholds do.
2. Female literacyis significantlylower than maleliteracy in all butone village.
Female illiteracy is likely to be correlated with remoteness andethnicity. In Tan Ho, which is only a relatively remote village inBao Thang district, males are literate in 43% of households, yet only4% have literate women. No poor household here has literatewomen or girls. Levels of literacy amongst females in remote areasare also lower than their counterparts in the midlands. In Lao Chai,11% of households have literate girls, in stark contrast to Coc Sam
66
which has achieved near universal literacy amongst females at 99%.Interestingly, female literacy is higher than male literacy in Coc Samamongst poor and total households.
3. Literacy levelsare lower inremote areas.
Overall, the four remote villages have 44% or less male literacyamongst total households. This contrasts with 69% and 93% in thetwo most accessible villages. As pointed out above, this gap is evengreater for female literacy.
4. Literacy isclosely related toethnicity
The four villages that have 100% ethnic minorities show lowerlevels of literacy than villages with a significant number of Kinhhouseholds. Regarding male literacy: For example, Coc Sam village,which is 98% Kinh has 93% male literacy. Certainly these findingsneed to be interpreted with caution and balance. Ethnicity alone doesnot determine literacy rates.
All PPAs commented that this association of poverty and lower educationalattainment would reinforce a tendency for poverty to be inherited by the next generation.This logic could be extended to the other sub-groups who are receiving little education:where certain ethnic minorities and women are already disadvantaged and marginalized, thisfailure to deliver education services equally across all groups will tend to perpetuate theirisolation and so their poverty.
Agricultural and Aquacultural Extension Services face difficulties in their outreachto more remote areas. Most of the focus group discussions held with poor farmers raised theissue of lack of technical information. Farmers felt deprived of an opportunity to developtheir plots because they lack the skills and knowledge which could lead to importantproductivity increases. Whilst this limited outreach is probably substantially due to resourceconstraints in the District Extension Stations, there were also concerns about the overallapproach to agricultural extension. There were certain instances, especially in Tra Vinh,where poor households felt that they had been overlooked for inclusion in training and thiswas voiced particularly by women. There were also concerns about the directive, plan-ledextension activities which had taken place in Ha Tinh, where farmers had been encouragedto grow sugar cane on unsuitable soil because this was part of the agricultural plans for thearea. Although the Government has withdrawn from direct management in agriculture,agricultural promotion activities still seem to be far from demand-led.
Formal sector financial services, including those which are targeted to the poor,seem in rural sites to be bypassing the poorest groups. In Ha Tinh, the PPA suggested that,“most of the poor, and perhaps all of the poorest people in the PPA communes currentlyhave no access to loans through official sources”, leading poor residents in one poorcommune to note, “whilst the rich get loans, the poor get consideration for loans”. Themain formal sector financial service providers in rural Vietnam are the Vietnam Bank ofAgriculture (VBA) and the Vietnam Bank for the Poor (VBP), but because the VBP isadministered by the VBA, many households do not see a difference between the twoinstitutions. The VBP (with the Women’s Union, often) is the conduit for subsidized loanfunds from the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) and other programs.
67
Because these funds are subsidized, their supply is highly restricted and loans from thissource are in high demand. Though not as cheap as VBP loans, VBA loans are still verymuch cheaper than the informal sector and, as such, are quite sought after.(see Box 20 below)
Box 20: Connections and Access to Credit in Tra VinhMany poor people felt that richer households were receiving funds meant for the poor. A participant ina focus group discussion recalled when discussing HEPR loans, that: “There were some meetings andthey told us to make applications, but then only three people received credit. All of these people werenot poor at all . . . they had land and buffalo.” Other similar cases included a very wealthy man(whose family owns 40 cong of land) being given a loan of 5,000,000 VND meant for victims ofHurricane Linda, while poor families were denied these funds on the grounds that they lackedcollateral or had existing debt. In another case, a household ranked ‘average’ in well-being (with 10cong of land), was able to receive loans from 3 funds: VND 4 million from the Hurricane LindaFund, VND 5 million from the House Foundation Funds, and VND 2 million from the Women’sUnion.
Factors which skew access to these credit sources in favor of the better off include:1) Potential applicants for loans from these sources have to have approval of the
Village Manager and Commune Chairman. Households with more influence withthe authorities are likely to gain preferential access to formal sector loans: “Loanshave been given at the subjective decision of the Xom (village) leaders, whoprovided the loan to the person he liked” (from Ha Tinh PPA).
2) Procedures for application and criteria for approving loans are not transparent andare quite complex. Households had little information about different formal sourcesof loans. Those with information and literacy skills stand a higher chance of asuccessful application.
3) There are costs involved in applying for these loans which involve going to theBank several times, filling out the forms, getting approvals. There are alsounofficial costs which have to be paid to the Bank officers sometimes.
4) Although technically no collateral is needed for some of these loans, informallyCommune Managers are reluctant to authorize loans to those whom they feel areuncreditworthy.
5) Loans are tied to investment uses, whereas poor households very commonly haveto take loans to cover health or consumption costs.
6) General isolation and lack of influence: being from an ethnic minority village withvillage leaders who are newly-literate and less aware of opportunities was a severedisadvantage in Lao Cai Province, as table 19: Levels of institutional borrowing inone midland commune, Lao Cai, shows.
68
Table 19: Levels of institutional borrowing in one midland commune, Lao Cai
Coc Sam Village Tan Ho VillageVillage situated on main road99% Kinh ethnic group71 households.91% households borrowing.
Village situated 6 kilometers off mainroad100% Hmong ethnic group 47 households.0% households borrowing.
• HEPR / Bank for the Poor: loansamounting to 74 million VND issued to 32households.
• Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentBank: loans amounting to 20m VND(1994), 30m VND (1995), 60m VND(1996-97), 70m VND (1998).
• No Bank lending.
In Ho Chi Minh City, however, it seems as if there is greater access to formalsector credit by poorer households. The PPA reports that, by and large, poor households areaccessing the loans designed to reach them with the important exception of the migrantswho lack permanent registration.
Targeting
As the previous section on Government services suggests, the PPAs suggest thereare considerable problems with targeting services and safety nets to poor households. Inparticular, the rural sites all made reference to the problems with the official definitions ofpoverty. All districts covered by the PPAs were using the Ministry of Labor, Invalids andSocial Affairs (MOLISA) definition, which is 15kg of unhusked rice income per capita permonth (approximately US$4). At the point of identification of poor households, thisindicator becomes difficult to apply, particularly in Lao Cai where calculation requiresconversion from other crops. In Lao Cai, different organizations (the VBP and the Farmer’sAssociation) collecting information on the number of poor households came up with quitedifferent numbers, despite using the same indicator (see table 20).
Table 20: Percentage of poor and hungry households in two communesaccording to two organizations
Muong Khuong Bao ThangSource
% poor % hungry % total % poor % poor % totalDOLISA/FarmersAssociation
13% 3% 16% 17% 3% 20%
Bank for the Poor4% 10% 14% 23% 7% 30%
69
All the rural PPA teams felt that defining poverty by this single criterion led to anunderestimation of the numbers of poor households. They further felt that it narrowed thedimensions and problems of poverty in local authorities’ minds which leads to inappropriateemphasis on a very narrow range of poverty alleviation interventions.
The Lao Cai PPA included a chart which shows the weak points in the targetingmechanisms of the local authorities. This is reproduced overleaf.
70
Figure 2: Chart Showing the Stages in Targeting, Selection,Verification and Assistance to the Poor
Stage one - province level: the province peoples committeesends documents relating to poverty and hunger alleviationto the district including information on the target groups, thetype, level and amount of support, and support to be given bythe district peoples committee.
Stage two - district level: basedon the province decision, thedistrict then issues a documenton the specific procedures andthe way in which the workshould be carried out in thedistrict. Staff from differentsections are then assigned to goand work with the communeswhere support is meant to begiven.
Stage three – commune level:district staff work with thecommune PC, partyrepresentatives and the massassociations on how toimplement the support. Ameeting is held with communestaff, village leaders and stafffrom different sectors topublicly announce the contents.
Stage four – village level:village leaders (withparticipation of communecadres) then organize a villagemeeting with representativesfrom all households to informthem and build consensusaccording to the criteriaintroduced by district.
Stage five – communelevel: after the villageshave selected people whofulfil the targeting criteria,the commune leaders willthen compile, approve andsend the lists to thedistrict.
Stage six – district level: thesector departments of the districtwill then summarise and checkthe lists provided by thecommune and send staff to thecommunes to verify them ifnecessary. They make a reportand send this together with thehousehold lists to the districtleaders for approval. Stage seven: after
approval, the operationalsections work with thecommune peoplescommittee to monitor theactual implementation ofsupport provision – i.e.making sure it goes to theright households, andamount etc.
Households
Weak point – limitedprovision of trainingand information
Weak point – difficultto organize meetings insome villages.
Poor
est h
ouse
hold
sla
ck c
onfid
ence
and
time
to p
artic
ipat
e
Weak point – sectorcoordination (e.g. banks,extension and veterinaryfor livestock assistance)
Weak point - difficulty ofmaintaining regular contactwith remote communes
71
CHAPTER 5: Gender Relations
Views of women were actively sought during the PPAs and all the research teamsheld women-only discussions and interviews in order to gather female perspectives onissues. Most of the issues raised by poor women were the same issues as raised by men,though sometimes with a slightly different emphasis: for poor men and women, the primaryproblem is generating a stable and sufficient income to cover consumption needs. For poorhouseholds, other problems are secondary to this. Women did identify some problemswhich were uniquely associated with their gender, such as issues of reproductive health.Other issues, however, were not raised directly by women as a problem, but have beeninterpreted as such by the research teams. Workloads are example of this: women are soused to their disproportionately heavy workloads that they do not regard them as abnormalwhilst outsiders look at the daily timelines and see a burden so heavy as to raise concernsabout possible health effects.
Box 21: Gender based problems in PPA Study Sites
Gender-based problem Sites mentionedUnequal decision-making power in the household Lao Cai, Tra Vinh, Ha TinhDisproportionately heavy workloads Lao Cai, Tra Vinh, Ha TinhHealth issues Lao Cai, Tra VinhDomestic violence Lao Cai, Ho Chi Minh City,
Tra Vinh, Ha TinhAccess to and voice in institutions Lao Cai, Tra Vinh, Ha Tinh
Access to education for ethnic minority women Lao Cai, Tra VinhVulnerability to declines in well-being Lao Cai, Ho Chi Minh City,
Tra VinhWomen as a tool in coping with hardship Lao Cai, Ho Chi Minh City
Women and Decisions in the Household
There are interesting contradictions in the discussions on financial management inthe households. Whilst men often talk about women being the money managers (forexample, in Ha Tinh) and suggest that important decisions are shared, this does not meanthat the household is managed in accordance with women’s priorities (or even sharedpriorities). Women in both Tra Vinh and Lao Cai commented on the amount of scarcehousehold resources which are spent on alcohol and tobacco, both items used only by men.It seems that even if women are the nominal money managers, they do not actually have thepower within the household to curtail this expenditure
In Tra Vinh: “almost all households reported that men spent a significant portionof household income on tobacco and alcohol, despite women’s disapproval. A man saidthat he meets with his friends to drink about 20 times per month, each time spending around
72
VND30,000 (or VND600,000(US$43) per month). In many households this constitutesaround 50% of monthly income. One woman said , “whenever they make money, men in theneighborhood pool their money together for alcohol and food – if they have money theymake a dog, if not, a duck....women do not dare to eat, they save their money in casesomeone in the family gets sick.””
In Lao Cai: “A Hmong woman exclaimed: “Men can spend money freely ondrinking and cards, and yet we women don’t dare even spend an extra bit on a piece ofcandy at the market.””
An important area in which women report having little control is reproductivedecisions. In Ha Tinh, the preference for a male child puts considerable pressure on womento keep having children until a boy is delivered: "If you cannot produce a son, your husbandwill marry another girl and you'll be spurned by the people in your village.” In Lao Cai,women reported having to have more children even though the family could not afford itbecause the husband wanted more children. The PPA study team also listened to womenwhose husbands had beaten them when they found out that their wives had been fitted withIUD’s and forced their wives to remove the IUD’s. Women in Tra Vinh also reported alack of control over reproductive decisions.
Discussions about changes over time in Ha Tinh summarized in Table 21: Changes inwomen's responsibility and authority in Ha Tinh below suggest that women’s authoritywithin the household might have improved a little over recent years, but the men remaindominant.
Table 21: Changes in women's responsibility and authority in Ha Tinh
10=most dominant in this role Average Scores(2 women’s, 3 men’s groups)Past Present
Men Women Men
Responsibility forfamily/housework
4.3 10 5 10
Responsibility in social affairs 10 4.2 10 5.5Right to decide within family 10 5.3 9.7 6.5Right to decide in social affairs 10 4 10 5
73
Women and workloads
“Men discriminate against us and there remains a biased view that women’swork is minor. Men don’t do anything to help women because of ideas about thedifferences between what husbands and wives should do.” PPA women’s groupdiscussion in Ha Tinh Province, 1998.
Discussions both in Ha Tinh and in Lao Cai suggest that men are beginning tocontribute a little more to the burden of housework. It is clear from a study of the dailyschedules, however, that the burden of these work still falls overwhelmingly on thewomen’s shoulders. Where this combines with long hours of agricultural or day labor, thetotal workburden which women endure is significant. The daily timetable in Table 22: Dailytimetable for a woman in Lao Cai below for women in Lao Cai is illustrative of this:
Table 22: Daily timetable for a woman in Lao Cai
4:00
6:307:008:00-12:00 pm12:00-12:3012:30-5:006:00-7:007:00-8:008:00-9:009:00-10:0010:30-11:00pm
Wake upCook breakfast for familyPrepare meal for pigs and chickensCollect waterFeed pigs, chickens and horses.Have breakfast and feed the familyWalk to fields (often 3-10km away)Work in fieldHave lunch and rest in the fields.Continue working in the fields.Walk back home. Collect fuelwood on way. Or process hemp byhand.Cook dinner for family and animals. Feed all, wash clothes andchildren.Grind corn and pound rice by hand for next day.Embroider clothes.Go to bed.
There are several repercussions from this long working day. The first is that thewomen are quite clearly physically overworked, especially since in the upland areas there isa very good chance that she will also either be pregnant or breastfeeding whilst carrying outall these tasks. Women report a number of health problems which result from this overwork.The second consequence is that women have no time for social activities and, by extension,for learning in an informal environment from the experiences of others. Thirdly, womenhave no chance to participate in evening literacy classes, if available and relevant. Fourthly,women are unable to participate in village meetings and decision-making fora.
74
Women and domestic violence
There was strong evidence of significant levels of wife-beating in all sites exceptHa Tinh, where respondents suggested that husbands were now treating wives betterbecause livelihoods had improved and the stress of economic hardship had lessened. In HoChi Minh City, it is the children who talk most about wife-beating when they discussdimensions of poverty. Seeing their fathers beat their mothers causes immense distress forthe children. The women themselves complain less about the beatings and the researchers inthe Ho Chi Minh City study explained that this is because the women believe it is “normal”for husbands to beat up their wives. In one highland village in the Lao Cai study, a women’sfocus group estimated that 70% of husbands subjected their wives to regular physicalviolence. In another, lowland village, they estimated that 40% of wives were regularlybeaten. The section on domestic violence concludes ominously, “that these wife beatingsoccurred in both a remote, minority village as well as a midland, economically integratedvillage indicates that domestic violence against women cuts across economic and ethniclines, and may be more widespread than is realized.”
Respondents reported a very strong link between alcohol consumption anddomestic violence, as illustrated by this passage from Tra Vinh:
“Another woman complained that these drinking bouts can result in physical abusewhen husbands come home drunk. `There are 2 men who live near me who beat theirwives`, said an interviewee who confirmed comments a number of women had made aboutspates of drinking/ partying by groups of men. Another woman in Xom Chua confided,“Lots of women in this neighborhood are beaten by their husbands. Lucky for me mybrother lives nearby, so if my husband starts coming after me I run to my brother’s house.””
Women and health
Women reported health problems which were caused or exacerbated by their heavyworkburdens, limited ante- and post-natal care and gynecological diseases.
Their workburdens (see above) mean that in many instances women are workingbeyond their physical capacities, sleeping only 4-6 hours per night and having no time forrelaxation. They reported suffering from back pains, headaches, arthritis and fatigue as aresult of overwork. There was also an indirect health effect on the rest of the family becausewomen were too busy to enforce proper hygiene on their children.
In Lao Cai and Ha Tinh, many women give birth at home without medicalattendance. Ante-natal and post-natal services are nearly non-existent in many of the moreremote villages. If the women are fortunate, they might be able to rest and be looked afterby a relative, but this is by no means the norm in poorer households. In Lao Cai (see box21), they might have to go back out to the fields within a few days of delivery. In poorhouseholds, they are unlikely to be able to afford the extra nutrients they require whilstpregnant and breastfeeding.
75
Box 22: Women and HealthLy Thi Lan. Han ethnic group. Lao Cai ProvinceWhen we arrived to interview Lan’s household we found that she had given birth threedays previously to a third daughter. Lan and her husband came to Nam Tang first in1992. Lan is generally responsible for the agricultural work, while her husband doesoff farm labor in other communes (7 or 8 days at a time). She gave birth at home,while her husband was away. The grandmother comes to help out with cooking etc.,and has brought some rice. The household has one chicken, which lays an egg on mostdays so she can eat these. But she appeared to be very weak after the birth. She saidshe plans to rest for about 25 days, but if it rains she will go to work sooner becauseland would need to be planted.
Insanitary living conditions and a dependence on IUDs and abortions as the mainforms of contraception lead women to report a high incidence of gynecological problems.Family planning campaigns rarely try to engage men or encourage them to takeresponsibility for contraception.
Women and institutions
Men usually attend village meetings on behalf of the households. In rural areas,women are poorly represented in the Government administration and there is no perceivedneed to seek women’s views separately from their husbands. This might be partly becausethe Women’s Union is supposed to play the role of ensuring that women’s interests areconsidered. However, the Women’s Union does not have good outreach in some of the moreremote parts of the uplands. It does not always have a representative constituency, since notall women can afford to be members, and it does not always have an active local leader withthe ear of the Commune leadership. And even if the Women’s Union is effective inrepresenting women in a particular area, this does not necessarily replace the need for directmechanisms which allow women to speak for themselves in decision-making arena.
Women’s access to formal institutions is often limited. If there is a male householdhead, he would normally be the person to access formal sector credit. It is also likely that theman’s name will be on the Land Tenure Certificate rather than the woman’s. Widowsinterviewed during the PPAs suggested that this caused great difficulties after theirhusbands’ death, because the procedures for changing the name on the land title were highlycomplex and elusive. Without the correct name on the land title, it is problematic trying tosecure a loan.
Education and Ethnic Minority Women
Ethnic minority women are disadvantaged relative to their menfolk in terms ofaccess to education. This is very clear in the literacy figures presented in the Lao Cai PPA(see Table 23: Proportion of males and females literate in Vietnamese Language): only inthe predominantly Kinh village were female literacy rates comparable to those of men(actually they were higher).
76
Table 23: Proportion of males and females literate in Vietnamese Language(able to speak, read and write) in Two Districts of Lao Cai
District Muong Khuong Bao ThangVillage Lao Chai Thai
Giang SanXin Chai Tan Ho Nam
TangCoc Sam
Ethnic Group Phu La Tu Lao,Hmong,Phu La, TuDi
Hmong Hmong Kinh, Han,Dao,Hmong,Giay
Kinh, Nung
Location Upland MidlandMost Remote LeastRemote
No. H’holds 28 41 49 54 71 73% Total HHswith Males /Femalesliterate
43 / 11 34 / 15 44 / 23 43 / 4 69 / 66 93 / 99
These very low literacy rates and language skills tend to reinforce the tendency forwomen from these communities to be marginalized and isolated. Without language skillsand numeracy skills, they do not like to go to market, for fear of being cheated. Informationis not widely available in a format which they can absorb and their exposure to new ideas istherefore limited.
Women and coping strategies
There were several examples of women being “used” as a coping strategy duringtimes of hardship. In Lao Cai, the research team found that households might respond to alack of labor by marrying off their eldest son. This then brings a daughter-in-law into thefamily who will then have to labor for her new household. One family had done this in orderto keep their son in school: they could not afford to lose his labor and so found him a wifewho could labor for him whilst he completed school. In Ho Chi Minh City, there wereseveral cases of women being sold to foreigners for US$1000-3000, which would then pulltheir families out of poverty. There were also cases of men making their wives pregnant sothat the babies could be sold for adoption.
77
CHAPTER 6: Priorities and Problems of Poor Households
Many of the key problems which the poor face come through in the aboveexamination of well-being and ill-being. These problems are summarized in Table 25 whichspans the next two pages. In the table, some of the “problems” also appear under the causecolumn (“resulting from…”). This reflects the difficulty both respondents and researchersfaced in picking causes and problems of poverty. The reality is that poverty is, for the mostunlucky, a self-reinforcing circle: being asset poor and marginalized means you cannotaccess those services which might help you out of poverty. As an example: one factor in ahousehold’s poverty might be the low levels of education. But the poverty prevents thehousehold from investing in the children’s education, so the household labor force remainsunskilled and uninformed and the household remains poor. Similarly with ill health. Poorhouseholds suffer more ill-health because of their poverty: they lack clean water and soundpreventative health skills and resources. But because they are poor, they are less well-placedto cope with their ill-health.
PPA teams analyzed the problems and priorities of the poor in segregated groups:with women, with men, with the elderly, with children and with young people. The Lao Caiteam also canvassed the views of local officials to assess different viewpoints on what wasneeded by poor households. With the exception of the children’s groups, similar problemswere raised by different groups, with the main variation being in terms of emphasis. Table24 below gives an example of the relative viewpoints.
Table 24: Prioritized needs of Different Groups of Poor Peoplein Lao Cai Commune
Mixed Group’s Priorities Women's Groups' Priorities• Provide loans• Improved transport• Irrigation• Children can go to school• Health care services• Kill insects harming plants and livestock• Decrease contributions• Improve intellectual standards, apply technical
/scientific advances
• Provide loans• Children can go to school• Health care, family planning services• Kill insects harming plants and livestock• Decrease contributions• Improve intellectual standards, apply technical
/scientific advances, training for women
Elderly Groups' Priorities Children’s Groups' Priorities• Free-of-charge medical examinations• Improved transport• Stable irrigation• Provide loans• Social insurance for farmers• Improve intellectual standards, apply technical
/scientific advances• Have places for meetings and entertainment
• Houses that don't leak and are near school• Roads to school are not muddy• Decrease contributions for school• Enough books• Don't have to cut wood, watch cows• Have a place for entertainment
77
Table 25: Problems and causes of problems raised by poor households
Problem Resulting from….A lack of land (landlessness a special case in Tra Vinh), or poor quality land, or landholdings which do not allow the development of abroad range of on-farm activities and which cannot produce enough food or cash income to feed a familyExtraction of a high proportion of gross income in the form of taxes, fees and contributions leaving net income which is insufficient tocover basic needs (only in Ha Tinh)Unfavorable phase of the household lifecycle: too many consumers and not enough laborersA lack of off-farm income generating opportunities to augment or substitute for meager on-farm incomeA competitive labor market with little long term security for unskilled laborers (especially in Ho Chi Minh City)
Chronic hunger
Fragile livelihood systems (see below)Inability to confront crises such as ill health or failure of an investment, without forgoing current or future food consumptionOccasional hungerHigh level of risk involved in diversifying income sources for a poor household
Limited information on techniques and markets, exacerbated by linguistic and literacy constraintsLimited access to capital for investment and fear of indebtednessHigh risk or failure and consequent hardshipLack of labor
Restricted diversificationof household activitiesbecause of:
Remoteness from markets which promotes a reliance on food self-sufficiencyHigh instance of crop failure due to drought or floods and very high incidence of animal disease
Fragile livelihoodsystems
Unstable labor market (for Ho Chi Minh City); lack of opportunities for off-farm income (rural areas)Indebtedness Limited access to formal sector financial services; limited range of formal sector financial services appropriate for the poor; limited
access to facilities for safe and profitable cash savings; limited cash incomes to cover interest payments and principal repayments.Unaware of some Government programs because the communication flow is interrupted/general lack of informationVery restricted supplies of subsidized inputs (such as HEPR credit) are captured by the better-connected householdsPhysical remotenessToo expensive or not appropriate to needs, especially health and education services
Limited access togovernment services
Excluded by status (migrants in Ho Chi Minh City) or by gender (some service target the household head)Exclusion on grounds of poverty, ethnicity, gender, legal status, provenance, perceived antisocial behavior, self-exclusion based oninferiority complexIsolation on grounds of physical remoteness, workload
Limited language skills, limited understanding of and exposure to wider environment, lack of confidence meanscertain poorer households have little input into local decision-making
Exclusion, isolation,marginalization (lackof voice)
Marginalizationon grounds of:
Low levels of representation by leaders because leaders also lack language or literacy skills or because they are nottaken seriously by higher levels of administrationWomen and certain ethnic groups underrepresented in local leadershipNon-consultative, non-participative, non-transparent leadership styles (varies tremendously)Gender: women generally do not attend decision-making meetings
78
Poor preventive health care: little health education; poor nutrition; poor hygiene; restricted access to clean drinking water; livestockmanagement techniques which have negative health effects; smoking; alcoholism and drug addiction (sometimes)Problems in curative health including: inability to afford medical care; inability to afford indirect costs of health care; ineligibility forhealth fee exemption (migrants, Ho Chi Minh City); self-treatment and self-prescription of drugs; variable quality of health services
Poor health
Gender: overwork; problems associated with having many children; problems caused by IUD’s; physical abuse by husbandDirect costs: school fees (though the earliest levels, certain ethnic groups and “alternative” classes may be exempt);school construction fees; insurance costs; clothes; textbooks; pens; food
High costs ofeducation
Opportunity costs: child labor sometimes an important coping strategy
Low education
Low perceivedbenefits
Inappropriate curriculum; teaching in a foreign language (for ethnic minority groups); low quality teaching; lowparental value attached to education; limited scope for using education because off-farm opportunities are sorestricted; returns to girls education sometimes seen to accrue to future husband’s parents
Low literacy skills; limited language skills; limited educationLow ownership of radios; low outreach of media
Lack of information
Problems with the flow of communication – several weak points which interrupt information flow to and from householdsLow quality housing Lack of funds to invest in housing; insecurity about permanence of housing because of city upgrading plansInsecure familyenvironment
Economic stress and alcohol abuse. Children were deeply concerned about domestic violence, quarrels between parents and the threat ofmarital break-up.Health problems from overwork and troublesome contraceptive methodsDomestic violence, associated with alcohol abuse and economic stressLimited decision-making power within the family; limited ability to control the allocation of household resourcesLegal difficulties: difficult to transfer land into a widow’s name following the death of her husband, which in turn limits access to formalsector credit
Gender-specificproblems
In ethnic minority areas, lower educational enrolment and attainment for girls constraining overall development, limiting language skillsand increasing isolation from the wider world.Lower social capital; limited range of social connectionsLiving in areas earmarked for clearanceExposure to drugs and crime
Restricted access to Government programs, for example HEPR loansDifficulties in obtaining steady employmentDifficulties in buying property and connecting to public utilities
Problems specific tomigrants
Ineligibility for permanentregistration leading to:
Ineligibility for exemption from education and health costsBad attitude of wealthier households and local officials towards poor householdsBeing in debt and being humiliated by moneylenders
Inferiority complex
In some instances, due to poor households’ involvement in drug or alcohol abuse or gambling
79
The poor prioritize interventions which will increase and stabilize agricultural and off-farmincomes
Hunger, the inability to cover basic food needs throughout the year, is mentioned inall sites by poor groups. This is caused in rural areas by a low asset base and undiversifiedlivelihood systems which, together, produce inadequate income to feed all the mouths. Notonly are the livelihoods chronically inadequate. They are also vulnerable to the risk offailure which then leads to acute crises, the impact of which may last for many years. Wherepaddy land is farmed, the poor accord high priority to the development of effectiveirrigation systems. Access to formal sector financial services is considered important inattempts to diversify farm bases into new, profitable activities. Extremely high priority isalso attached to the dissemination of more information on new techniques, on markets andon government services available. In Ha Tinh, households strongly prioritized a reductionin their contributions to the Commune, which they found regressive and punitively high.
An improvement in off-farm employment opportunities was a particular priority in all areasexcept Lao Cai
Increased opportunity for earning cash by working off the farm was seen as animportant strategy for handling household livelihoods. Demand for labor is still constrainedin the rural areas visited and is often seasonal in nature, therefore contributing little tooverall stability. Improved employment opportunities was overwhelmingly the highestpriority in Ho Chi Minh City, where most of the poor households studied were living a veryvulnerable existence.
With few exceptions, the poor prioritize interventions which will help their children to attend andfinish school
Poor households visited were very much aware that good education for theirchildren could provide a longer term strategy for developing their livelihoods. This,however, is often overridden by short term concerns over food security which leads to theexpenditure-reducing, income-raising strategy of withdrawing children from school andusing them to help contribute to the family income. Where local education options wereseen as being low quality (for example, the alternative basic education classes in Ho ChiMinh City) or inappropriate (for example, in some ethnic minority areas) there was lessincentive to maintain a child’s education in the face of a household economic crisis. Whilstpart of the response to this problem lies within the education sector – specifically reducingcosts to poor households whilst improving quality and relevance of education – improvingeducation completion rates is also a matter of improving livelihood security.
The children interviewed were particularly concerned that they should be able to goto school like the other children, have uniforms like the other children, have textbooks likethe other children, have their school fees paid on time like the other children and have lunchlike the other children.
80
Improvements in infrastructure were often seen as being part of the solution to problems of poorhouseholds
Improving physical access through the development of new roads or upgradingof existing ones, was considered very important by poor households. The Lao Cai and TraVinh PPAs strongly suggest that physical isolation is closely related to more generalmarginalisation from the wider community and economy. Although remote communitiesmight have higher levels of social capital within their village, they are generally morevulnerable to shocks and crises because the whole community is poorer. They are also moreprone to crises, because their isolation from markets discourages diversification of incomessources and their access to information is extremely constrained. Other infrastructuralimprovements which were prioritized varied from site to site, but included school upgradesand upgrades to teacher accommodation, clean water supplies and improvements toirrigation and drainage systems.
Households prioritized access to formal sector financial services to help with consumption andinvestment, but greatly feared the prospect of indebtedness
The HEPR as it is currently implemented gives a key role to the provision ofsubsidized credit. Over the coming years, the components of the HEPR will be broadenedand the PPA research suggests that this is very important: the needs of poor households areunlikely to be met by cheap loans alone. In particular, health care, education, information,training, infrastructure and institutional reform are seen by poor households as having animportant role in providing them with more stable livelihoods.
For the greater part, formal financial services are not reaching the poor. Even thoseservices specifically designed to serve the poor are not reaching them. This is partlybecause, as with many subsidized inputs, their supply is limited and they are informallyrationed. In these circumstances, the better-off and better-connected households seem toenjoy greater access to the loans being made available at subsidized interest rates. Since thepoorest households are paying around 10% per month for informal loans in rural areas and20-30% per month (even up to 60%-70%) in Ho Chi Minh City, it seems unnecessary todepress artificially the formal sector rates, thus limiting the supply of funds.
The PPAs raise the serious question of whether the provision of subsidized creditthrough the formal banking sector is actually the best way to assist poor households. Inmany instances, their demand for cash could be more appropriately served by access tofacilities for cash savings: in the case of ill health, for example, a household requires moneymore quickly than is often possible through the formal banking services. As much as accessto existing credit sources, poor households voiced a need for a greater range of moreappropriate financial services. Table 26: Financial needs of the poor - current and requiredfinancial services from Lao Cai gives some examples. It is important that the provision ofcredit alone is not seen as a sufficient response to all household problems. Simple provisionof wider access to credit without addressing some of the other dimensions of poverty – suchas ill health, low education, the high levels of risk involved in diversifying on- and off-farmactivities and the general lack of opportunities for investment might simply lead to greaterindebtedness. Being trapped in debt is one of the greatest fears expressed by many poorhouseholds.
81
Table 26: Financial needs of the poor - current and required financial services
Demand or Need Current Strategies Financial ServiceRequired
Immediate demand for largeamounts of cash in responseto a severe crises such as ill-health
Not available for manypoorest people. Raisingcash for costs of a medicalemergency outside thecommune may beprohibitive.
• Medical insurance.• Strengthened
community safety netsto cover side costs (e.g.food banks).
Immediate demands formoderate amounts of cash inresponse to a crisis such as illhealth, damage to property.
May be met by:a) Borrowing from
friends and relatives(with attendantreciprocal obligations)
b) Borrowing frommoney lenders (at highcost)
c) Selling financial assets(livestock).
• Quickly approvedemergency loans.
• Easily accessiblesavings accounts orcommunity basedsavings schemes.
Cash or food to meetseasonal shortfall in foodproduction.
May be met by:a) selling labord) borrowing from friends
and relatives (withattendant reciprocalobligations).
• Timely short termconsumption loans
• Easily accessiblesavings accounts orcommunity basedsavings schemes.
Cash for regular annualexpenditure (e.g. school fees,materials, taxes)
Selling labor, informalborrowing.
• Time deposit or fixedterm savings accounts.
Investment in newopportunities.
Current lending schemes(e.g. HERP/VBA andMRDP) limited in terms ofloan period and productsavailable.
• Wider variety of loansto suit the nature ofinvestment.
In all sites, poor households felt that access to information was a high priority
Poor households in all sites feel under-informed about Government programs,about new techniques which might help them to improve their livelihoods and about thewider world. It is difficult to emphasize enough how important this was judged to be bypoor households. Groups who feel particularly under-informed are:
• Migrants (especially those without permanent registration)
• ethnic minorities (especially those with limited language skills)
• women (especially those with limited literacy or language skills or those whoare particularly overworked)
82
PPA reports suggested a range of proposals which could help direct informationbetter towards these groups.
For poor migrants, equal access to government services is a priorityThe poor migrant communities who lack permanent registration are arguably amongst
the most marginalized groups in Vietnam. They face official discrimination, which is nottrue of any other group in Vietnam. The discrimination is part of Government’s policy tolimit rural-urban migration. It is difficult to tell whether or not this policy is working(maybe there would be larger inflows if these controls were removed), but what can be seenis that recent poor migrants arriving in Ho Chi Minh City suffer additional hardship onaccount of this policy. If the poorest urban residents are not allowed access to servicesdesigned to protect and improve the lives of the poor, then the prospects of creating a realurban underclass must be considerable.
Box 23: Migrant family in Ho Chi Minh City
Hanh’s family has a temporary residence permit. Hanh lives with his wife, Hoa, and 4children, whose ages range from 2 to 13. The family’s only assets are an old woodenbed, an old bicycle, a few bowls and chopsticks and some pieces of clothing that hang indifferent corners of the house. They share 32 square metres of living space with 2 otherfamilies, in all 11 people.Hanh and Hoa had both dropped out of school after grade 3, which means that they arebarely able to read and write. Hanh works as a mason’s helper, earning 20,000 dong perday, and Hoa is a washerwoman, earning on average around 150,000 dong per month. Inboth cases, their work is irregular.Three years ago, they took a private loan of 600,000 dong at a high rate of interest,which they have not yet been able to repay. They want all their children to go to school,but do not see how they can cover the expenses in the future. Hoa would like to get aloan from the HEPR programme, which would enable her to start a small business, settletheir debts, and pay for their children’s education. Because of their residence status, theydo not qualify for a government loan, and they cannot expect any help from theirrelatives, who are in the same boat. They see no solutions to their problems and no wayfor their children to escape poverty in their turn.
Poor households feel that interventions should be better-targeted
In all sites, poor households complained that services intended for them were notreaching them. They further complained that they were charged for services which weresupposed to be free or subsidized. Poor households wanted:
• to know what services they were entitled to, so they could demand them
• for costs and procedures to be made transparent so that they would know ifthey were being charge unfairly or whether they are entitled to exemptions
• to know the criteria for identifying beneficiaries in poverty reduction
• activities, so they would know whether they were included
• to be involved in the identification of beneficiaries for these programs.
83
Poor households feel they should be involved in the decisions which affect them
Repeatedly on reading the PPA reports, the reader is struck by the lack of influencepoor households perceive they hold over local-level decisions. The system currentlyoperates to inform households on matters which local authorities feel they need to knowabout. In the PPA sites the system does not ensure consultation and does not seek to involvethe population actively in decisions which effect their livelihoods. In order to developlocally-relevant, pro-poor interventions poor households will have to be involved in theplanning process far more actively than hitherto. This, in turn, will require that communeleaders and cadres:
• have the methods and techniques for listening to and targeting poor women,men and children
• have skills in community-based planning and monitoring
• are able to facilitate and support initiatives and processes led by local people,rather than directly managing all of them.
For the elderly, access to affordable health care was a priority
All poor households suffer greatly when a family member falls sick because of thehigh direct and indirect costs of seeking treatment. Because the elderly are more prone toillness, this hits them with particular force. All the PPA site reports includerecommendations about making public health services more affordable and accessible topoor households.
For children, a secure and harmonious family and community environment was priority
Children from poor households in Ho Chi Minh City expressed considerableanxiety in their discussions with the research team. They see violence in the home and areoften the victim of this violence themselves. They see fights in the neighborhood andwitness the heavy-handedness of the Mafia and moneylenders. They face hostility in thecommunity and they feel humiliated by their poverty. They deeply fear the crime and drugaddiction they see their older siblings become involved with. What they prioritize is ahappy, healthy home life, a peaceful, supportive community and going to school withoutbeing ridiculed by either the richer children or the teachers.
Domestic violence might be limited by public campaigns and truly concerted policeefforts to bring abusive husbands to justice. Most people point out that the domesticviolence is mostly related to either poverty or alcohol or both. Campaigns that seek toreduce male alcohol consumption might therefore have a helpful impact, but this will be atough challenge. It is probably only through sustained improvements in the livelihoods ofpoor households and communities that most of the children’s concerns will be addressed.
84
Information sources
For the sake of readability, this report does not footnote every quotation from the PPA sitereports. Unless otherwise annotated, it should be assumed that analysis and informationpresented here from the different sites is drawn from the following documents and sources:
For Lao Cai1. Lao Cai Province Participatory Poverty Assessment 1999, Final Draft for Discussion,
Edwin Shanks, Bui Dinh Toai, Pham Dung Dai and Vo Thanh Son, Vietnam SwedenMountain Rural Development Program
2. Discussions with team members
For Ha Tinh1. Ha Tinh Participatory Poverty Assessment Report, Draft for Discussion Actionaid
Vietnam in collaboration with Ha Tinh Province Committee for NGO Affairs and HanoiResearch and Training Center for Community Development
2. Site reports from Son Ham Commune, 1998 and 1999; Thinh Loc Commune, 1998 and1999; Thach Dinh Commune,1998; Ky Lam Commune, 1998; Cam Duong Commune,1998; Dai Nai commune, 1998; Thuong Loc commune, 1999
3. An internal memorandum concerning some quantitative data from Ha Tinh4. Discussions with PPA team members
For Tra Vinh1. Participatory Poverty Assessment in Duyen Hai and Chau Thanh Districts, Tra Vinh
Province, Vietnam, (Draft) April 1999, Oxfam GB2. Site Report of a Participatory Poverty Assessment in Duyen Hai District, Tra Vinh
Province, Nguyen Phuong Quynh Trang, Hanoi, Vietnam, May 19993. Untitled site report from Chau Thanh District4. Discussions with PPA team members
For Ho Chi Minh City1. A Participatory Poverty Assessment in Ho Chi Minh City, July 1999, Save the Children
Fund UK2. A Report on the Participatory Poverty Assessment in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi
Minh City, April 1999, Huynh Thi Ngoc Tuyet et al3. Report of Survey Results (Focus Group Discussions) on the Participatory Poverty
Assessment in District 6, Ho Chi Minh City April 1999, Nguyen Thi Hai et al4. PPA Report – District 8 – HCMC (first draft)
Meetings with PPA team member
85
